An Unexpected Love
by Magician April Aries
Summary: Chapter 10 up! “I didn’t come here to reopen old wounds, Xiao Lang,” she whispered. “I came here to release you of… of whatever it is that you may think we have. We were just children back then. We didn’t know what we were doing.”
1. Chapter 1

Author's Note: This is my first CCS fic... so go easy on me, okay? I know this isn't really the expected pairings, but I JUST HAD TO DO IT. Wahaha.

Chapter One

"Oh come on," he hissed into his phone, the rapid Chinese words firing out of his mouth distinctly out of place in his surroundings. Already he was attracting some stares, which he blandly ignored. "_Meiling, _you're almost an hour late. What's holding you up? You said that you'd be here ages ago. You made me fly all the way out here to New York and for what? So that I could talk to an empty bar chair?"

Meiling was whispering as she spoke, as though she was being forced to keep her voice down. "I'm so sorry, Syaoran! It's just that I'm being held up over here… you see there's this… um… okay, I can't really talk right now. It's a work thing. My boss suddenly called for an emergency meeting. I'll be a little late. Just bear with it for a while, okay?"

"Fine," he said shortly, clicking his phone shut angrily. A woman entered the small café, dripping wet from the rain outside. He barely glanced at the doorway as she entered, and then took a seat beside him at the bar, droplets of water trickling off her Burberry trench coat.

"Hey," she said to the barista, her eyes hidden by the enormous shades that covered half of her face, hair tucked underneath a beret. "The usual please, Sandy." And after that a lot of unintelligible English. He frowned; the woman spoke with a wan smile on her glossy lips, but she spoke very little compared to Sandy, who chatted endlessly. He snorted to himself and took a sip of his fifth cup of black coffee.

"Hi," the girl beside him said, cocking her head to one side. "Haven't seen you around here before."

"Mmm," he said with a polite nod in her direction. He didn't know all that much English, and he fidgeted. May as well kill time while waiting for Meiling… but still, he couldn't converse with an absolute stranger like her. He didn't know enough words to do that anyway. "Uh, sorry—I don't really speak English."

"Yeah," she agreed in perfect Chinese. "Your accent is distinctly foreign. It's really easy to tell that you're not from around these parts. Hong Kong?"

His eyes widened. "Yes, actually. How did you—?"

She smiled. "I've spent a lot of my life there."

Immediately he warmed up to her. When you're in another country and everything is alien to you, you're quick to respond to anything that seems familiar. And Li Syaoran was no exception, even as grouchy and guarded as he tended to be. "Good to hear Chinese again," he said with relief. "Sorry. I'm waiting for my cousin here, you see, and she kind of got into trouble with one of her bosses."

The girl took a long sip of a steaming cup of jasmine tea that Sandy placed in front of her. "Ugh, work—mankind's greatest disease. I wondered why you came here. This isn't exactly a tourist hot spot, and even New Yorkers rarely know about this place." She sighed. "It's a little like heaven, just being able to come here and cut off the rest of the world, just basking in the solitude. And the tea's pretty good."

"Yeah, well, my cousin said to wait here for her. I don't really have much of a choice." He stretched a little, and looked down at his empty cup. "Besides, New York's supposed to be full of muggers and stuff like that, right? I don't really feel like wandering off and kicking someone's ass right now."

She gave him a look from behind the sunglasses. "You mean that you could take on those knife-wielding freaks?" she said with an amused laugh.

He smiled a little from behind his overgrown brown bangs. Honestly, you would think that at twenty, he'd be able to tame his hair a little… he grinned inwardly. All the gel in the world would be futile in the face of his thick hair, which stood up on end as he raked a hand through the strands. "Yes, actually, I think I could," he said boldly. "I'm LI Syaoran, by the way."

"Li Syaoran?" she repeated after him after a moment's hesitation. He wondered what was going on behind those sunglasses of hers, because he had the odd feeling that she was staring at him. Oh crap. Didn't she say that she was from Hong Kong? Then she'd probably heard of the Li clan. But her reaction was merely that of appraisal. "Hmm. Cool name. You can call me Xiao Long."

"Xiao… Long?" He stared at her, as though he'd just been hit over the head.

"Uh-huh," she said, and then momentarily switched to English to translate her name. "Little Dragon. Sounds weird for a girl's name, I suppose, but who cares? So, how come your name doesn't really sound Chinese? It actually sounds more Japanese to me. Funny… maybe it's just because I grew up there…"

"You grew up in Japan?" he asked, switching to Japanese. "Really. So you've traveled a lot, haven't you? I stayed there for a while too, in Tomoeda."

"Really," she said with elegant delight, signaling to Sandy to refill her cup and letting the rising steam from the fresh tea bathe her face in a misty cloud. "Tomoeda. It's a very lovely place. I wonder if I've seen you there before, but that was all so long ago. I especially loved the cherry blossoms there."

A lump rose in his throat. "Yes," he said simply.

A hand reached out for his, long, slender fingers wrapping around his wrist gently. "Is something wrong?" she asked him softly in concern. "I hope I haven't said anything wrong. Do you miss Japan?"

"In a way."

"Ah. A girl."

He flinched. Right on the mark. "Oh come on. All I said was 'In a way'."

"All love is 'in a way'," she said with a small smile.

"Odd… you remind me of someone," he said, jerking his head.

Now she _really _laughed. "I always remind people of _someone,_" she drawled. Then a long black car pulled up outside, and she flinched when she caught sight of it. "Oh _no._ They caught me again." With a wistful smile on her face, she stood up. "It was lovely talking to you. You're like a breath of fresh air in this place, and anyway it's good to hear Chinese and Japanese again. How long are you staying in New York?"

"Anything from a couple of months to a couple of days, I expect. Maybe less, maybe more, depending on what my cousin has to say to me."

She hesitated, the drawling, sophisticated exterior dropping for a second and giving way to something like schoolgirl shyness. "I hope I run into you again, Li Syaoran. Maybe I'll catch you here tomorrow or something."

"Yeah, maybe."

Hearts from Aries

"You're late," he snapped at Meiling when she finally slid into the seat that Xiao Long had just vacated, but his tone had lost some of the edge that it had had when he'd spoken to her over the phone earlier, and Meiling took it as a good sign.

"Sorry, Syaoran," she wailed. "It's just that my _horrendous _boss had us working overtime again. I swear, don't you _ever _become embroiled in this stupid business. I mean, I thought being part of the record company meant just schmoozing with the stars and stuff like that. But they don't call them _divas _for nothing." She stretched and yawned. "Irish coffee," she said to the barista with a signal of her hand. "But you don't seem as angry as you were awhile ago. Are we cool?"

He nodded and sighed. "Fine. We're cool. Just tell me that you have a place for me to stay while I'm here and that you're taking me there the second you finish your coffee and all will be forgiven. I'm definitely not up to sight-seeing tonight."

She bit her lower lip and ran her finger along the rim of her glass. "Okay. But actually the reason why I called you over here to New York was because… I found this really great business opportunity for you. And anyway you must have anticipated that, because you _really _aren't the type to come out here just for a little tourist trip. Right?" She smiled shrewdly at him. She knew him all too well.

"I had a feeling that something was up," he agreed. "And you're right, I never would've come out here otherwise. So. An opportunity for the Li clan's business, you say? I'm betting that it's nothing magical." He smiled wanly at her. He hadn't used his magic in over four years now, except to hide his aura from other magical people.

"I always thought that it was a waste of your talents, Xiao Lang," she whispered, so softly that he almost couldn't hear her. But hear her he did, and his face turned white and his eyes narrowed.

"Meiling. I told you not to call me that ever again," he said, his tone flat and furious. "Not even my mother and sisters are allowed to call me by that name anymore. And magic is a part of my life that I've left behind, all right? It's really none of your business. Maybe if you had magic, you'd realize that it isn't all that special."

She looked as though she'd just been slapped. "You know I would have wanted it, and if I had them, I would never have cast them off," she said. All her life, she'd felt kind of left out because she didn't have any magical powers. Especially during the time that she'd been in love with him. He was always trying to leave her behind because she couldn't fend for herself. "But I guess I don't really blame you for the way you're acting right now… Syaoran."

"Thank you. Much better."

"You still aren't over it…" Meiling looked sadly at him. "I thought that maybe you'd gotten on with your life by now. We thought it was okay, letting you throw yourself into the Li business like that. But you've just gotten worse."

"It isn't for you to judge what's better and what's worse for me," he said crisply, glaring at her. "That's all in the past. I _am _over it. And enough with the sap, it's just irritating. I thought that you had something for me?"

"As I was saying, there's this client of mine who's becoming a big hit over here," Meiling said, turning her attention back onto business and onto her Irish coffee. "She's a singer—both in English and Chinese. Mostly love ballads on her piano, and she's really good. Getting popular with both nationalities. Apparently she's heard of your mother, or something like that, and she has the deepest of respect for Aunt Yelan. I thought maybe if you helped out here, we could get a deal from her, and maybe you could get a cut for the Li business as well. In fact, I bet that you could get the deal straight to the LI business if you wanted to. I just happen to know that records aren't really your thing."

"True," he said. He paused, considering her offer and raking a hand through his messy hair. Well, he'd already gone all the way out here. And he wasn't really up to the formulaic sigh-seeing tourist claptrap that he would have to do otherwise. And Meiling would beg if he said no. He imagined the shouting matches and waterworks and her insistent pleading over the next few days and shuddered. He would never get out of New York alive if he didn't give in. "Give me specifics. And a sample of her music."

Meiling's eyes lit up. "I _knew _you'd be in on it!" she said brightly. "And the suite I arranged for you already has some of her CD's waiting for you inside. I'll introduce you tomorrow. She's amazing. But she's incognito right now, doesn't want anyone to get wind of her over here. The paparazzi have been hounding her for quite a while now. I was sure that you'd already heard of her back in Hong Kong."

He shrugged. "I'm not really into the whole music scene," he pointed out. "I'm twenty years old and I have a life."

She laughed. "Music is _part _of life, Syaoran. Don't be so dismissive of anything outside your narrow little boxed-in life."

"My life isn't narrow, little or boxed-in," he said. "Just because I don't drink or do drugs like your clients doesn't mean that."

"Hmm. Right. Let me guess, while waiting for me you did nothing but drink cup after cup of coffee," she predicted. "That's because you're so boring, Syaoran. You never do anything but work—"

"Actually, I was talking to someone," he said.

Her eyes lit up again. "Ooh, really?" Then her grin faded, only to be replaced with a smirk. "Oh wait. Yeah right, Syaoran, dream on. You barely know anything except elementary English. Stop kidding around."

"I did," he said. "And it's really none of your business."

"So it was a _girl_! Ooh… didn't she mind that you couldn't talk to her? I'll bet not. She probably ran on insufferably like a chatterbox while you did your whole 'strong and silent manly Syaoran' act, tossing in the occasional smoldering gaze or two as she giggled like an airhead…"

"We. Talked. Get that through your head." He glowered at her. He didn't like it when she assumed so much (or that she called Xiao Long an airhead; she deserved better than that). He knew that Meiling was the one who most wanted him to get on with his life. His mother and his sisters had already accepted the way he was. It had been five years for them since what had happened. But for him, it was only yesterday. It was only five seconds ago. No way was he going to forget.

"Touchy, touchy," she murmured, grinning. "How did you talk, then?"

"We opened our mouths. We made sounds."

She hit him on the head, looking irritated and amused at the same time. "God. You're _so_ annoying when you're being sarcastic. Did you know that? But then, you're annoying pretty much all the time." She finished her coffee. "Come on, let's go."

Hearts from Aries

Xiao Long sat in the unobtrusive black car, staring out the tinted windows at the glittering streets of New York as they made their way back to her suite. Glittering with rubbish and pigeon droppings, anyway. She sighed and startled to fiddle with the button that would lower the windows. It seemed kind of _old. _The so-called glamour of NY had never really held all that much appeal for her—and she'd only been there for a couple of days.

"Is something bothering you?" her agent asked from the front seat, stopping her from lowering them. Honestly, she was getting out of hand these days. And acting so peculiarly. Perhaps they should have stayed in Beijing. Ever since she got that call from Li Meiling, she'd started changing. "I have to say that it was hard tracking you down to the NY Hearts café. You shouldn't have run off like that. You know better. The paparazzi could have swooped in on you anytime and just snapped pictures—and I know that you've been avoiding catching the public eye for a long time now. Did I just see a guy with you?"

"Sort of. Just some random guy from China," she said, pulling off her hat and letting her hair down with a sigh.

"But you used to live there," the agent probed insistently. "Did you know him?"

She just smiled mysteriously back at him, and then out at the window where she caught sight of a certain brown-haired young man entering a taxi with his tall cousin, none other than the same Li Meiling whom she'd been speaking to about the possibilities of her new record deal. "I don't really know anymore."

Hearts from Aries

Author's Note: I know, this is a bit dull... but I promise to show you what happened if you keep reading. Review, review, review!


	2. Chapter 2

Syaoran entered the apartment with a heavy sigh. "All my stuff's in here?" he questioned Meiling. He'd already sent his luggage to her two days in advance so that she could arrange things for him. Anyway, he trusted her to know him completely. He realized with appreciation that everything he'd sent her was put away exactly like his room back at home in Hong Kong. The furniture was simple, elegant, and best of all, actually usable, unlike the fancy crap that he usually got whenever he went on business trips. She had good taste. "Perfect. Thanks, Meiling."

"No problem, Syaoran," she said with a warm smile. "This floor is permanently reserved in the name of my company anyway. You're rooming amongst the stars, or stars-in-training, now—lots of people would kill to be in your shoes. You might want to make friends with them while you're over here. The person I was talking about… she's here too. In the next room. Do you want me to introduce you now?"

"No thanks," he said, flopping down on the bed and testing the mattress. He was dying to jump up and down on it just like he had when he was still a pre-teen in Japan—not that anyone ever knew that he'd done that. Except maybe Wei, who had wondered why the bed had fallen apart after just a year. "Just tell me the truth, though: is it some filthy-rich Chinese brat who happens to have a nice voice and a body to match and therefore screams mass appeal?"

"Don't worry," Meiling assured him. "She's great. You'll love her."

His eyes narrowed at the last three words. "This had _better_ not be another one of your lame-brained matchmaking attempts, Meiling."

"Syaoran, _please. _Give me credit for being smarter than that. I know better than to set you up with anyone else by now," she replied, shaking her head ruefully. "But I wish to God that I could still hope for you. Oh well. But at least you could make friends while you're here."

They saw a girl in a Burberry trench coat suddenly walk by the open door, conversing in Japanese on her cellphone. "Yes, Eriol, I _will _bring you something nice back as a souvenir," she said, sounding slightly exasperated but clearly enjoying the banter. "No, I promise it won't be one of those cheesy 'I Love NY' shirts. You have my oath. I'll ship it over there." She laughed into the phone. "Be quiet, Clow Reed."

Syaoran gave a little start as he heard the last two words. Hiragizawa Eriol…? The voice was familiar too. When the woman turned, he realized that it was Xiao Long from earlier, her face still hidden underneath the hat and behind the sunglasses, even though she was inside. She was being trailed by someone who was obviously her agent, plus a bulky man whom he supposed was either her boyfriend or her bodyguard. Eyeing the man's gun, which was peeking through his pocket, he believed it to be the latter.

"_Hae. _Give my regards to Ruby Moon and Spinel Sun." She flipped her phone shut with her thumb, then turned and realized that she had an audience. "Li-san!" she blurted out when she saw them. Then she seemed to realize that they both had the same last name. "Um… Meiling-san," she said, switching to the first name. Although she spoke in Chinese, she automatically attached Japanese honorifics. "I didn't know that you two were related. I ran into Li-san earlier today already. So you must have been the cousin he was talking about! I had no idea. He was irritated that you were late."

Meiling snorted derisively. "I was _late _because they told me that you'd run off again. You have to stop doing that—oh crap. I almost said your name out loud. Remind me that you're incognito again, or I'll let your name slip." She chuckled, shaking her head. "But I'm glad that you've already met Syaoran." She beamed at her cousin. "This is the singer I was telling you about! I had no idea that the two of you already know each other."

Syaoran stared hard at her. "How do you know Hiragizawa Eriol?"

Xiao Long betrayed no reaction except to consider him from behind her shades. "Oh, him. He's an online friend of mine. We exchanged cellphone numbers—his screen name in chatrooms is Clow Reed, and he told me that he's in the same neighborhood as two of my other chatmates, Spinel Sun and Ruby Moon. Why? Do you know him too?"

"We're kind of... related," he answered, grimacing at the thought of Eriol's reaction had the reincarnation of Clow Reed heard him. Eriol would have laughed in his face and called him 'my cute little descendant' over and over again, just to irritate him.

"Small world," she said with a grin. "Do you two want to come in and have a cup of tea with me? It's still pretty early. And I may be able to persuade my dear bodyguard and agent to leave me for awhile by myself if I'm with Li Meiling, marital arts expert." She turned to her agent. "Please?"

"Oh no. Not the puppy dog pout," the agent said, trying to ignore Xiao Long's pleading tone. "Fine, go ahead. But no more running off or I'll have you locked in your room for the next millennium. Clear?"

She laughed affectionately. "You're more like my older brother than my agent. So, Meiling-san, Li-san, will you?"

"Yeah, sure," Meiling said automatically, digging her fingers into Syaoran's arm and clearly sending him a message: don't you dare back out or I'll have your head on a platter, sweet cousin. She sent him a poisonous death glare and he forced a smile on his face too, nodding in assent.

Hearts from Aries

"Thank goodness. Now I've got them off my back," Xiao Long said, breathing a sigh of relief as they entered her sumptuous suite. It looked a lot like Syaoran's, but more lived-in. He couldn't help noticing the stack of DVD's and video cassettes piled up near her closet. She noticed him looking at them.

"Oh, those. Pay no attention to them. They're just some gag videos of… of some friends of mine, when we were younger." She stared at the wobbly pile with something like regret and wistfulness. "We all sort of drifted apart when we got older. That tends to happen a lot in this day and age. How about you, Li-san? Meiling-san said that you two have been close since you were children, but then again you two are relatives. Do you still talk to your childhood friends?"

A flash. A pretty brown-haired girl with emerald eyes. Tears brimming over.

"No," he said with effort, suddenly glad that his bangs were so long—at least they hid his eyes. "No, we don't, not anymore. Like… uh, Eriol. We used to live in the same neighborhood." His mouth twisted into a scowl at the thought of the other boy's face—but no, Eriol wasn't a boy anymore, was he? "He was always an immensely irritating pest, but I suppose he was okay in his own way. But we don't talk anymore."

Meiling reached out a protective hand to him, taking his hand into hers with a gentleness that most of her coworkers, who'd dubbed her 'Oh-she-who-must-be-obeyed-unless-you-want-to-be-spitting-teeth-out-for-the-next-eighteen-years', would probably have fainted at seeing. "Hey. That's okay, Syaoran," she said softly.

"Tea?" Xiao Long asked, handing him a cup and gracefully glossing over what was evidently a painful subject for him. Or so he thought. "So you and Eriol used to be friends. Neighbors and relations, even. I wonder… he's so much fun, you know, and he's extremely tactful. Why don't you talk to him anymore?"

"We have issues."

"Hmm." She took a quick sip of her tea. "And the rest of your friends? Do you have issues with them too?"

"He doesn't know where some of them are," Meiling supplied when he hesitated for a nanosecond before answering the question. He shot her a dirty look, knowing full well who she was talking about. That was an extremely sensitive subject that he really _never _wanted to touch on. Ever again.

"Really." It was a word, not a question, when it came from Xiao Long's mouth. He frowned at her. She most definitely reminded him of someone. But it seemed almost like sacrilege to even imagine… he took a big gulp of the steaming tea, burning his tongue and feeling grateful for the numb sensation. She was assessing him. Those shades were a mercy right now, because he felt as though her eyes would have burned into his head had he been able to see them. "That's sad. But that's reality, isn't it?" She sighed. "Why didn't you look for them, then?"

"I _did,_" he said through gritted teeth. If only Meiling hadn't breathed a word about it. He was staring daggers into her head, but she only fidgeted a little before bestowing upon him a small, apologetic smile instead of squirming as usual. "I couldn't find them."

"Maybe you were looking in all the wrong places," she said serenely.

He stood up. "I'm… feeling kind of tired. Jet lag." He avoided Xiao Lang's gaze as he started backing away slowly, putting down his empty cup onto the table. "I'm sorry. I just really need a good rest for now. Maybe we can all talk tomorrow instead." Maybe by tomorrow she'd forget everything that had been mentioned.

Unlikely.

Hearts from Aries

It was five years ago. There was nothing about that day that was out of the ordinary. Chiharu was yelling at Yamazaki, who was gleefully spinning yet _another _farfetched tale as Eriol egged him on and Rika actually humored him by listening. Meanwhile Naoko was buried in a book, and Syaoran was busy talking with Kinomoto Sakura.

_His girlfriend. _

He was beaming at her, and the way her face lit up back at him was almost too mushy for the others to endure, if they weren't so kind and understanding about the couple and their unbelievable sappiness. There was nothing out of the ordinary; at least, nothing that he'd noticed. Until it was a little too late to do anything.

"Ohayo," Tomoyo said dispiritedly as she entered the classroom, just narrowly avoiding being late. Then she smiled tiredly as she saw the two of them, Syaoran and Sakura, sitting together and holding hands. "You two are so kawaii," she told them with a half-hearted laugh, taking her place at her desk.

"What's wrong, Tomoyo? You don't look too good," Sakura said. "Are you sick?"

"It's… nothing," the other girl said, smiling sweetly at them. But her typical 'benevolent fairy godmother slash hyper girl with a really big voice and camera' wasn't working quite as well today. She looked up, feeling a presence by her side. "Oh, hey Eriol."

He looked down at her with concern. "Is everything all right?"

"Yes," she insisted coolly. She never got flustered—that was just who Daidouji Tomoyo was. "Honestly. I'm just feeling a little under the weather today." She laughed with a dismissive toss of her head. "I was up all night—I think I'm becoming an insomniac. Must be all that coffee I've been drinking lately. I really have to switch to decaf."

Eriol took her by the hand. "Come on, let's just talk a while."

She looked at the door. "But the teacher might—"

He blinked. It was a small gesture, but one that didn't escape Syaoran or Sakura's detection. They frowned at him, as thought to say, _don't use magic for social purposes, Eriol!_ But he ignored them and kept his eyes on Tomoyo. "Oh, he'll be late today. Trust me on that." Reluctantly she got to her feet, allowing him to take her hand and lead her outside the door, down to the landing between first and the second floor.

"So. What's wrong with the lovely Daidouji Tomoyo?" he asked her flat-out.

She flinched. "Eriol, I have no idea what you're talking about."

"You've been showing a tendency to mope these past few days," he said. "I notice, even if no one else does—"

"Of course they don't," she said. He looked into her eyes and wondered what secrets she concealed there. Even he, as Clow Reed's reincarnation, could only predict. He didn't know. He couldn't see into people's hearts. There was a flash of something wrong there, but Tomoyo was a gifted actress. She may as well have been blind, because all he saw there was an ocean of purple that reflected his face. He had no idea, to be honest, of what was going on here. "They don't," she said in carefully measured tones, "because there isn't anything wrong with me, Hiragizawa-san."

Ouch. Now they were on formal, last-name basis? He winced at the distance that she was deliberately putting by way of her form of addressing him. "They only don't because you're good at hiding things from other people. I'm asking because I'm concerned, Tomoyo," he said, keeping his own voice light and cheerful. "Please. Is it your mother?"

She flinched again. Bingo.

"Mother is away overseas. You know that already, Hiragizawa-san." He scowled. Again with the last name! She sighed. "You were there when I was telling Sakura and Li." A pause. "Why don't you tell me what this is really about? This isn't just me, is it?"

No, it wasn't. Stupid teenage hormones. Even with his magical talent and brainpower, he was still prey to those ridiculous adolescent pangs. "I just wanted to make sure that you were all right, Tomoyo." Ever since that Kaho thing had fallen apart… he just… he couldn't take his eyes off her.

"I'm fine, Hiragizawa-san." She even added a little bow as she spoke, as though to emphasize the thin sheen of courtesy that was making the conversation bearable for her. "Please don't worry about me."

But he couldn't do that.

Maybe it was just because he was on the rebound from Kaho. _That's it, _he thought. How could it be possible…? No, most certainly not. Kaho just couldn't face it that he was all that younger. She had been in love with the magic, not with him. He would never be Clow Reed; whatever power he had, he just wasn't his past incarnation.

And was that where Tomoyo came in?

Syaoran and Sakura were peeking out at them from above, their hands interlocked as they looked down at their other two friends who were conversing. "You think she's okay?" Sakura asked him, frowning down at them. "I don't know _what _Eriol's thinking. Tomoyo can handle anything. Didn't he hear her when she said that she was just tired?"

"Mmph," Syaoran replied eloquently, wrapping an arm around her thin shoulders. "And I'm sure that you're factoring in the whole 'We are now fifteen years old and not everyone is exactly nice in this school'. You're worried that Hiragizawa's fan club will be after Tomoyo, right?"

"Well… yeah, there's that too," Sakura acknowledged with a protective frown at her best friend. Normally it was Tomoyo who watched over Sakura. "But I hope that those two get together! They would be so…"

"Kawaii?" he suggested with a laugh. "Now you sound like Tomoyo. And to think that I thought that my girlfriend was normal!"

"Shut up," she said, punching him lightly on the arm. "Can't I have my _own _starry-eyed kawaii freak moments?"

He chuckled. She was adorable. It was still pretty much hard to believe that the two of them were together. "Nope. Tomoyo already patented those. You know that." He kissed the top of her honey head gently. "But it's cute that you try."

She smiled up at him, not realizing that the scene below was escalating into something else. "Could you cut the whole 'Hiragizawa-san' thing, Tomoyo?" Eriol said. "It doesn't really suit you. I thought that the whole frozen-heart act died out when my cute little descendant stopped being so cold."

"Sakura really changed him," Tomoyo said softly. "They love each other so much—it's almost as though they were destined to be together. Even though other people's hearts get stepped on." She ran a hand through her hair. Eriol scrutinized her. "Like Meiling, I mean. She was really… well…"

Eriol bent down and kissed her.

Hearts from Aries


	3. Chapter 3

Syaoran awoke with a start, realizing that he had been crying out in his sleep. His eyes widened as his glance flew wildly around the room. Oh. He was in New York, in a suite that Meiling had put him in. He coughed and pushed his damp hair out of his eyes, trying to reorganize his thoughts. He still had dreams—no, _nightmares_—about his past. Every single night. But it had been a while since he'd actually let them get to him like this.

"Li-san?" Someone was knocking on his door. He sleepily looked at the clock beside his bed and groaned. It was three in the morning. "Are you all right in there? It's me, Xiao Long. What's wrong?"

He opened the door, feeling oddly alert after that nightmare. Immediately his mind began searching for an appropriate lie as he barely glanced at her while speaking. "Hey. I'm okay. Sorry—you must have heard those noises. I must have leaned on the remote in my sleep," he said, adding an embarrassed laugh for effect. "I'm sorry for scaring you like that." Then he looked up at her, finished with his falsehoods. "You're still in your street clothes?" he asked, surprised.

"Oh," she said, looking down at her trench coat and pants. She was still wearing those silly sunglasses of hers, which he had to admit he would have found pretentious had anyone else done it. But then again, she _had _said that she was keeping her true identity secret from just about everyone. He wondered what she looked like, behind all those things. She was even still wearing a hat, her hair tucked up neatly underneath it so that he couldn't see a trace of it. "Well, I went out for a walk."

"You're not supposed to do that," he said, frowning. "I thought you promised your agent—"

She sighed. "I'm twenty, Li-san, not twelve. Why don't you come have a cup of tea with me?"

He stared grumpily after her. "Is that all you ever drink?"

She shrugged, padding over to her suite—which happened to be just beside his. No wonder she'd heard him, then. "I find that tea helps after most horrible situations. And that's really what life is, isn't it? It's just one big horrible situation."

"Here," she said, thrusting a steaming cup of tea into his hands and pouring one out for herself. "Chamomile this time instead of jasmine. I hope it calms you down a little. You don't exactly look so good. You had a nightmare, right?"

"What?" he sputtered. "No, of course not. I don't—"

"—know what I'm talking about? Sure you do," she said. "It's okay if you don't want to tell me, Li Syaoran." She yawned. "I'm pretty sleepy myself. Finish off the tea and go back to sleep."

His eyelids were already starting to droop. "Did you put something in this tea?"

"Hmm? Of course not. What a silly thing to say—that accusation is absolutely pointless. Actually, your former friend Eriol sent me that. He said it would help me sleep."

Damned Hiragizawa.

"Li-san, do you mind if I tell him that I've seen you? I'm sure that he misses you."

He clenched his fists. "Like I said, we have issues."

"Please trust me when I say that friends can forgive each other anything. I know that better than most would."

"Yeah, yeah." He drained the rest of it and set it down. "Thanks," he said, with a little bow. "That really helped." He found himself yawning and cursed Eriol again, but his last sentence was true, at least. If not for the tea, he'd probably have been unable to go back to sleep, stuck in the void of all his memories. "And, uh… yeah. You can tell Hiragizawa. But don't expect me to talk to him or anything, okay?"

She smiled softly at him. "Sleep tight, Li-san."

Hearts from Aries

Sakura suddenly looked down at the two in the middle of bantering with Syaoran. Eriol had Tomoyo in an embrace, but her best friend was just standing there, her hands at her sides. They were kissing. Tomoyo's _first kiss_. She stared down at them, and Syaoran, catching her eye, looked down too.

Eriol realized that Tomoyo was like ice in his arms. She didn't move, until finally she put her hands on his shoulders and gently pushed him away. Her violet eyes were blank, icy patches of amethyst. They were empty and lost. He let go of her.

"I'm so sorry, Eriol," she whispered, momentarily forgetting to use his last name. "I'm… I'm just so sorry. I… can't… do… this…" Then she began to take gulping breaths of air, as though she was choking, and the next thing he knew, she was sobbing on his chest as though her heart was breaking, clutching onto him for dear life. He realized, through the fog that was surrounding his mental faculties at the moment, that she was actually _crying. _Daidouji Tomoyo, who never cried.

It was disturbingly beautiful to see her this way.

He stroked her hair, murmuring into her ear. "No, Tomoyo, I'm the one who should be sorry. You're hurting right now." And he felt her knees give way, and he let her slide down to a kneeling position, falling right with her and ignoring the pain of kneeling on the hard linoleum floor of the school. "Come on, Tomoyo, it'll all be okay," he whispered. Her hair was so soft. Her heart was thudding wildly, and he could feel it against his.

"No, no, it won't be okay," she whimpered, unaware of the two pairs of eyes staring down at her and Eriol, so closely wrapped together. "It's been… so long… I don't think that I can handle this anymore. I've been taking it and I thought that I could keep on doing it forever, but I _can't_!"

"You can tell me," he said softly. "Tell me what's wrong, Tomoyo. What happened? What can't you handle?"

"I just… I'm so _weak,_" she said, the last word coming out as a hiss between her clenched teeth. She let go of him, wiping her eyes and hiccupping slightly. "I'm really sorry, Hiragizawa-san. This is kind of embarrassing for me. I probably look like a real mess. And your shirt's all wet."

The walls were up again. "Oh Tomoyo. Why won't you tell me what's wrong?"

"Because—because there's _nothing _wrong!" she sputtered, trying to retain some veneer of her normal self. "Nothing that concerns _you,_ Hiragizawa-san." The shocked hurt in his eyes made her wince, but she wouldn't acknowledge it. "Please, can we just drop this subject? I _will _be able to take care of it, so I don't need anyone taking care of me. I have to go wash my face. And perhaps you should dry off your shirt as well."

"Tomoyo, no, wait!"

But she was already gone.

Hearts from Aries

Tomoyo reentered the classroom, stopping only at Rika's desk to laugh over something and chat awhile. The teacher still wasn't there; he was over half an hour late, and by now the students were wondering what had happened to him. If Sakura hadn't known that Tomoyo had been crying her eyes out just moments earlier, she never would have believed it; her best friend looked just fine. The typical telltale signs of mother-of-pearl luminescence under the eyes weren't there, but Sakura couldn't see any makeup on her friend's face. Tomoyo was just that type; the kind that didn't know how to cry.

Or that was what Sakura _would have _believed, anyway.

"What's wrong, Sakura? You look a little out of it," Tomoyo said in concern.

Syaoran let out a deprecating little laugh, tousling his cherry blossom's hair. She let out a contented sigh, but it carried a hint of anxiety in it. He hoped that everything would be okay for Tomoyo—after all, she'd been there to listen to him when he'd had problems telling Sakura that he liked her. "You know her. She's probably spacing out because of our math test today."

Sakura snapped back to reality. "WHAT MATH TEST?"

He chuckled, and Tomoyo had to hide her grin behind her hand. "There isn't one today, Sakura. Calm down. Syaoran was just teasing."

Eriol came into the classroom now too. He looked calm, collected—just about the same Hiragizawa Eriol. He looked a little bit disconcerted, especially when he tried to catch Tomoyo's eye, but she—was she pretending?—didn't notice him at all. WHAT THE HECK HAD HAPPENED? Sakura waved him over with a warm grin, but he just smiled politely at her and gestured that he was going to talk to Yamazaki and Chiharu, who were squabbling again.

"So, uh, Tomoyo, Auntie's going to be back from her business trip soon, right?" Sakura said, stuttering a little, flustered. "You _did _say that she'd be home tomorrow. And you said that the two of you were going to do something together when she gets back. That's so nice, I wish—"

"Mother called and said that she won't be back tomorrow," Tomoyo said quietly, tucking a strand of her hair behind one ear. "Something about a company and a great business offer. And since she happens to be in Beijing right now, it's a fabulous opportunity. Hitting two birds with one stone, really. After that she's scheduled to be in Paris, so it'll be a while before she comes home."

Syaoran had heard that tone before. Carefully nonchalant, making light of things—he'd used those same cadences when he was younger and had to have that control over his feelings. She was clearly hiding something from Sakura.

"You want to hang out with us later?" he blurted out all of the sudden. He saw the surprise on both their faces and quickly switched to smooth, fast-talking mode—something that Eriol had forcibly taught him recently, insisting that he now needed it since he had Sakura. "I saw this really great place, and it would be my honor to take you two lovely ladies there. And I'm sure that you two don't have anything better to do, right?"

"Yeah, Tomoyo! With your mother still not there, you probably don't have anything to do over at home. It must get pretty lonely," Sakura burbled, blissfully unaware of the 'Oh-god-that-is-such-a-tactless-thing-to-say' disbelief that hovered underneath Syaoran's carefully smiling exterior. It had been a long time since he had had to fake grins for his friends, who knew him well. He really had to practice more.

"Yeah, why not? You're right. It's been a while since we've been all together," Tomoyo said with a tight laugh for her best friend's sake. "But then, you two are _such _a kawaii couple. Absolutely inseparable." There was something hungry about the way she looked… as though she was starving for something herself. He felt kind of guilty. Ever since he and Sakura had gotten together, the two best friends had been spending less time with each other. She was right; they _were _inseparable. Now, if they hadn't been in the same class, they would barely have seen each other.

"If you're bored at home, you should take up classes or something," Syaoran offered. "I take martial arts, for example. There's a great local dojo just around here. I go every night at nine."

She brightened, chewing on her lower lip as she considered this prospect. She already had vocal lessons along with the modeling that she was doing now (at her mother's insistence because, she suspected, her mother was still persisting in making her a Nadeshiko clone) but that was for her mother's sake and nothing more. "Do you think that I could maybe take martial arts classes with you?" she asked him. "I always wanted to learn. Like Meiling, maybe. She doesn't have magical powers either, but she makes up for it with her martial arts."

"But you don't have anything to make up for!" Sakura said. "You're perfect just the way you are."

Tomoyo smiled tightly at her. "Thanks," she said, sounding distant. "That's a nice thought."

Hearts from Aries

Syaoran woke up—this time, not to cold sweat breaking on his forehead as it had earlier on, but to bright sunlight (what happened to the supposed dark New York days?) streaming through the windows and blood in his mouth. He'd bitten through his lip in his sleep. He sighed and went off to wash out the copper taste, brushing his teeth furiously. He couldn't bear looking at his reflection in the mirror; he knew that he looked like crap (although admittedly, most girls wouldn't agree with him on that point…)

_She didn't believe it. She never believed that she was 'perfect just the way she was'. I was so blind. We all were! She actually felt that she had something to prove. She didn't think that she was enough. Why didn't we notice that something was wrong long before that moment?_

_She didn't even try to fight for the one she loved because she thought she wasn't good enough._

He cursed inwardly as he spat out green foam. It was partly his fault, that time. She felt alone; he knew that feeling. Sakura had managed to discover what had happened the night before that day by using the Return card. With a frown, he checked the clock. It was already nine in the morning. _What the hell_? Normally he woke up much earlier than that, often getting up while it was still dark. But then, he hadn't slept very well last night, even if you didn't count that incident at three in the freaking morning, for God's sake.

_The maid knocked on the door, the sound cutting through the unbearable blanket of silence that enveloped the Daidouji household save for the murmurs of the passing servants, going about the last of their cleaning before turning in. "Miss Tomoyo, your mother's on the phone and wants to talk to you."_

"_I'm… I'm not here!" Tomoyo shouted back through the thick wood of the door. There was a series of odd bumps and noises from inside. The maid raised her eyebrows but made no comment on the strange thumps. "Please tell her that I'm asleep, Umeko-san. It _is _past midnight, after all."_

"_But Miss Tomoyo, it may be important…"_

"_I'll just call her in the morning!" Tomoyo said, then let the desperate teenage edge fade from her words, replacing it with the carefully modulated tones that she normally used, as was only 'fitting'. "I already received the message that she left in my voice mail. Please. I'm exhausted and would like to be left alone right now. Inform my mother that I am indisposed."_

He wiped off his mouth with the back of his hand and stepped into the shower. The water couldn't scrub away the thoughts inside his head, even as he dug his fingers viciously into his scalp, trying to wash them away.

"_Tell her anything," Tomoyo whispered, burying her face into the pillow. She was so still, it was almost as though she was dead; she wasn't even crying, just gripping tightly onto the bedspread with clenched fingers twisting the fabric. Stacks of books and her homemade movies lay on the floor; she'd evidently knocked them over. "Tell her I've run away, tell her I'm dead; tell them whatever the hell will work. No one gives a damn around here anyway."_

Syaoran rummaged around the medicine cabinet and immediately downed two aspirin, resisting the urge to consume the contents of the whole bottle and just finish everything off with a happy aspirin overdose. No, Meiling would kill him if he died. His ghost would never be able to rest with her yelling at his gravestone all the time, screeching at him for being an insensitive suicidal wart. He laughed a little picturing his cousin kicking at his gravestone and wailing like a banshee (hopefully his mother and sisters would be able to tie her down at that point, but with Meiling, you could never really tell…), splashing water on his face and dressing up quickly.

_Tomoyo's thumbs moved mechanically over her cellphone's keypad, her eyes glassy as they reflected the number displayed on her screen. "Moshimoshi!" Sakura sang out cheerfully on the other end, followed by giggling. "Syaoran, you big fat idiot, I'm on the phone here! Would you _stop _it already?"_

_He heard his own voice coming clearly over the phone, almost as though it had been him on the speaker and not Sakura at that moment. "Aw come on, Sakura. You can't back out of a tickle fight just like that. I'll bet you're just making up the whole phone call because you're losing."_

"_That's because you aren't ticklish!" Sakura retorted, followed by more laughter. "I'm trying to talk to someone here, you jerk. Hello? Hello?"_

_But Tomoyo had already hung up._

Hearts from Aries

The phone was ringing.

Syaoran gave his cellphone a death glare as he peered at the number. It was unidentified. Probably some random wrong number, but who cared. "Hello?" he said, finally making up his mind to answer it.

"Hello, my cute little descendant!"

He hung up immediately, and it quickly started ringing again. He looked at the number. Also unidentified, but it was different. Swearing that he would murder Eriol over the phone if it was him again, he answered it. "Hello?"

The voice that came from the other line was musical and distinctly female. "Li-san, it's Xiao Lang. Meiling-san gave me your number last night—actually, she kind of made sure to give it to me for some business reason or another. Um, I don't know how to break this to you, but something really weird happened last night. I just couldn't stop myself from inputting your cellphone number into my e-mail to Eriol after I told him that I'd met you. It was kind of weird, almost as though I was in a trance or something."

That damned Hiragizawa! Using his freaky magic on innocent women! "Yeah, he called me already," he said as calmly as he could. "I wondered how he'd gotten my number."

"So, have you eaten yet? Perhaps you could join me and Meiling-san for brunch, if you haven't yet."

"Okay," he said.

"Great, we're both in my suite right now; let's just meet in five minutes." And after he murmured his assent, they both hung up. Angrily he punched in another number, and waited with gritted teeth as the phone rang.

"Why'd you hang up?" Eriol whined on the other end, sounding as though his mouth was full of something.

"The freaking hell? Didn't anyone ever teach you not to talk on the phone while you're eating?" Syaoran said in disgust. "And they call you Clow Reed's reincarnation? What retarded part of the universe decided _that_?"

"First of all, the universe is not retarded, but if you keep badmouthing it your head will be seen severed on a pole with a bunch of loincloth-clad people dancing around you singing the Barney song, which I happen to know you hate more than anything else on the planet—except me, naturally. Secondly, I'm eating cheese. Are you happy now?"

"Cheese? Why are you eating cheese?"

Eriol chuckled. "I happen to _like _cheese, my cute little descendant."

"You call me that one more time and I'll hit you so hard your ancestors will hurt," he growled into the phone. "And you, what the hell do you think that you're doing, using your magic on Xiao Long like that?"

"On who?"

"Xiao. Long. Do I need to spell it out for you?" He sighed; a little bothered by the way her name so closely resembled his. "She said that she's using a different name because she's incognito over here, and that the two of you are online buddies. She's doing a record deal with Meiling."

"Oh, _that_… uh, Xiao Long. Yeah. Anyway, what do you think of her? Isn't she the most beautiful person you've ever set your eyes on?"

"How do you know she's beautiful if the two of you are only online buddies? Have the two of you met before or something?" Jesus. How quickly Eriol forgot Tomoyo, when that reincarnation of Clow Reed had sworn never to forget her.

Then again, it _had _been five years.

"No, but magic has its benefits, especially at nighttime." As Syaoran sputtered, Eriol drummed his fingers impatiently on the table over at his end. "Answer the question. What do you think of her? Is she smart, cool, confident, or what? Does she seem all torn up over a tragic past or something?"

"Huh? What the hell are you talking about?" Syaoran snapped. Eriol always seemed to get him at his worst moments or turn every moment into a 'worst moment', making him even angrier and bad-mannered than usual. "She's okay, I guess. I've only known her for a few hours, Hiragizawa. And how am I even supposed to know what she looks like when she's always wearing those freaking sunglasses and hat of hers?"

"Really." The way he said it was a word, not a question, just like Xiao Long. But with Eriol, it seemed annoying.

"Listen, Hiragizawa, we're going to brunch with Meiling."

"Wait a minute, Syaoran." The voice brooked no disobedience, and to his consternation, Syaoran found himself listening. "Please. I think you still owe me for what happened back then, right?"

Syaoran's heart leapt into his throat. "That was a long time ago, Hiragizawa," he said, gripping his phone tightly. He _knew _this call was a big mistake. And deep inside, he _knew _that it wasn't all that long ago. "I know I owe you, but I didn't think that you'd do it now, so late in the game." _And I don't know whether I can give you anything to make up for it, even if I offered you the entire world on a diamond-encrusted gold platter. _"Are you still mad at me over that?" Stupid question!

"Hmm. There're two sides to that question. I'm not mad at you in general. But over that, I'm still furious. In fact, I could kill you and then dance merrily over your burning corpse because of what you did, my cute little descendant. I can't ever forgive you on that one even if you were my slave for the rest of your life and danced in a pink tutu whenever I wanted." The tone was light and merry, but Syaoran could sense the underlying frostiness. "But never mind that now. I'm calling in a minor favor from you so that it'll ease the hostility a little bit."

"Yeah, what? It had better not involve whipped cream," Syaoran warned, remembering what Eriol had tricked Yamazaki into doing when they were still fourteen—a prank that resulted in Yamazaki doing things that he didn't like very much, and which had traumatized the boy so much that he had never touched whipped cream ever again. "Or the whole 'slave in pink tutu' thing."

Eriol chuckled sadly. "No. I just want you to stick close to Xiao Long while you're here. I want to make sure that she's okay. She's really lonely, you know. And so are you, if I'm not mistaken, my cute little descendant."

"Are you trying to set me up too?"

"What?" Eriol growled into the phone. "No way. She's too good for you."

"That's what you said the last time," Syaoran said, tired all of the sudden. Then he remembered that he'd promised Xiao Lang that he'd go for brunch with them in five minutes—and fifteen had already gone past. He'd kept her and Meiling waiting. "Crap. I have to go, Hiragizawa. I'm sorry."

"I know."

Hearts from Aries


	4. Chapter 4

Hearts from Aries

_What happened to the happy young girl with the video camera screaming "kawaii" every other second_?

That had been Syaoran's first thought when Tomoyo entered the dojo that night, wearing a _gi _like the rest of them and looking slightly lost and out of place. Most of the others gawked at her. The few girls who were there in the dojo rarely accepted newcomers, especially one like Tomoyo, who stood out immediately in her white belt and quiet demeanor. The guys snickered at her because she so obviously looked like a pansy—or because she was cute. Or sometimes both.

"Hey Li, check it out," said one of the guys. "Fresh meat."

"She's my girlfriend's best friend," he said warningly. "Be kind, you guys, or I'll break every bone in your bodies. She's a newbie."

Cries of "Aw, Li, you spoil everything!" and "Be a sport for once; don't sell us out just because of your _girlfriend!_" and "Man, you are so whipped!" chorused from the guys, who were laughing and punching each other like the baboons they were. "You're no fun at all. She's pretty cute, though."

He folded his arms across his chest, glaring at them menacingly. "What part of 'my girlfriend's best friend' do you not understand? I have to watch out for her." They snickered, knowing out the part that he left unsaid: Sakura will definitely kill me if I don't. "You break her heart and I'll break your ass. Got that?"

"Yeah, yeah. Just tell that to the _girls._" They pointed over at the few girls who were part of their regular practice team. They were good; even Syaoran had to admit that. They would probably kill Tomoyo in one of their constant attempts to prove to the guys how tough they were.

"Hey, Tomoyo, over here," he called over to her quickly. She lit up with obvious relief and walked over to him immediately, and he introduced her to the others. "Guys, this is Daidouji Tomoyo." He smiled at her. "I'm glad that you came."

"Yeah," she agreed, self-consciously tucking back a strand of hair that had come out of her ponytail. Everyone was staring at her, like she was some actress in a play or something. She ignored them; for once, she was glad that her years of being up on stage had given her so much poise under pressure. "Well, I did say that I would. And I wasn't busy tonight, so I decided to give it a try."

"Which is great," said another guy, grinning at her. Syaoran gave him a warning look, and he quickly backpedaled. "Now we've got more sparring partners."

Even worse. Syaoran glared at him, and the guy who spoke up cringed at the dead-eye he was getting. "Uh… I'm pretty much a beginner," she said. No one else was wearing a white belt—or even yellow, for that matter. "I don't think that I can really match up to the rest of you right now."

"Oh, come on," said one of the girls. Syaoran vaguely remembered her—Aoi something or another, he supposed. She made it no secret that she hated girls who couldn't defend themselves, as though they were a bane to society. Besides that, she liked Syaoran and hated Sakura, whom she thought was an airhead. And she had unfortunately heard Syaoran's remark that Tomoyo was Sakura's best friend. "Take me on, Daidouji. I promise not to kill you."

"No, that's okay—"

But Tomoyo just barely avoided the fist that came slamming out of nowhere. "Aoi, stop kidding around," Syaoran growled, then winced as Aoi managed to land another punch on Tomoyo's cheek. He moved towards her, ready to grab her if necessary.

"But I'm already going really easy on her!" Aoi protested as she followed up with a high kick that flew dangerously near Tomoyo's head. "Let her take care of herself, Li." The words were barely out of her mouth when Tomoyo twisted to the side to avoid the kick and dropped herself to the floor, then squeezed her eyes shut and grabbed Aoi by the other leg, yanking it upwards.

Aoi fell to the floor with a screech and a crash, slamming hard on the mats so that she wouldn't be injured. She pushed herself up to a sitting position shakily. "I thought you said that you were a beginner," she hissed at Tomoyo.

"I _am _a beginner," Tomoyo said shakily, pushing her hair out of her eyes and standing up. She held out a hand to Aoi, who ignored it and got up herself. "A very desperate beginner who did that out of nowhere to avoid getting squished. You'd be surprised what adrenaline can do."

"Lucky shot," Aoi grumbled. "I'll spar you for real next time."

Tomoyo nodded with all the coldness that she could muster and turned to Syaoran. Her face was white, and a purplish bruise was blooming on her cheek where Aoi had managed to hit her. "Was that the ritual hazing?" she joked nervously. "What's next, the typical tarring and feathering?"

"I'm so sorry, Tomoyo," he said gently. "Those girls can be really horrible sometimes, especially Aoi. She hates Sakura, so you kind of got caught in the cross-fire. Let me get some ice for that bruise."

"Oh no," Tomoyo moaned when she saw the mark on her face, examining the bruise in her compact mirror. It wasn't that big, but it was obvious even from a distance. She winced when she touched her cheek. Syaoran hurriedly gave her the ice pack to hold to the bruise. "My mom's going to kill me when she sees this. I'm supposed to have a concert soon." _Nothing that I can't hide, God and makeup willing. _"So, when's your teacher coming?"

"Teacher?" he repeated blankly. "Oh! Well, he's not coming tonight, I think. They only come sometimes, to see how far we've gone in our training or maybe to give us some tips. Usually we practice on our own, because our teachers have other work. This place _is _free, after all, so it's generally just a place where kids who've already learned this stuff put in some extra practice. But I could teach you a little if you like."

"Thanks," she said, smiling at him. It hurt to grin. She ignored it. "Does that mean I have to call you 'sensei' now, Li-kun?" she teased.

His cheeks flamed. "Oh come on. That's so—"

Then he caught the mischievous smile on her face. She was teasing him, and he stopped sputtering. Back before he'd gotten together with Sakura, he would have been a lot slower to catch on, but now he was a little bit more knowing about such things. "Well, it isn't all that far from the typical Li-san or Li-kun you call me anyway," he said with a grin. "You never really call me Syaoran."

"I thought it would be presumptuous," she said, sobering up now.

"Hey… of course not," he said. There was something about the way she said it that made him wonder why she was hurting so much… and why she wouldn't say a word to the rest of them, not even to Sakura, her own best friend. "You don't have to worry about things like that, Tomoyo. I've pretty much loosened up now, back from the time when no one except Sakura and my family were allowed to call me Syaoran. And anyway, we're friends."

She looked up at him through her long eyelashes and for a moment, in that sea of purple, he sensed a light being kindled behind them. "Thanks… but it would feel weird, since usually it's only Sakura who calls you that in the classroom. Or sometimes Eriol, although he calls you Li-kun as well."

He scowled. "Hiragizawa has no right to call me by my first name, even if we _are _related," he said menacingly. "Although," he added as an afterthought, "it's a big improvement over 'my cute little descendant', now that I think about it."

Tomoyo laughed. "Do you mind if I just call you, uh, Xiao Lang?" Her cheeks reddened as a line appeared between his brows, as though he was trying to scrutinize her suggestion. "I mean, the name 'Syaoran' is kind of… well… Sakura's thing. She told me all about that time, you know; when she first asked you whether she could call you that… so I wouldn't really feel comfortable calling you by that name." She wondered whether he would laugh at her or maybe feel offended. That was even more presumptuous than asking him whether she could call him Syaoran…

"Yeah," he said without missing a beat. "Sure, I'd actually like that." He smiled at her evident surprise. "What? I kind of missed being called Xiao Lang… only my family back home ever does that, and I don't exactly talk to them everyday." Oh _stupid_. Did he really have to mention family and not seeing them? He saw her eyes cloud for a moment, but she kept on smiling.

"Thank you, Li-kun. I mean, Xiao Lang," she said brightly.

"Okay, do you want me to teach you a little? It won't be much. I mean, it'll be hard since it's only the first session." _After what Aoi did, does she really plan on coming back? That had to be really nasty._

"It's okay," she said, as though reading his mind. "Don't worry." Her fingers brushed lightly against his. "Will you teach me?"

Hearts from Aries

"I can't believe you're freaking late!" Meiling scolded, rapping soundly on his head as punishment. Xiao Long chuckled from behind them. "What's wrong with you anyway, Syaoran? Still pulling the whole jet lag excuse? That's so not enough of a reason to keep two incredibly hot women waiting!"

He came up for air, ducking Meiling's punch. "Give me a break, Meiling."

She put her hands on her hips. "I have better things to do than argue with you. And besides, I just had a manicure done and I _really _want to keep it this way. But if you keep annoying me, I won't answer for the consequences. You got that?" Before even giving him a half-chance to reply, she quickly changed topics. "Come on, let's just go before my stupid cousin does something else to hold us up," she said to Xiao Long. With a huff, Meiling grabbed Syaoran's arm and pretty damn near broke it dragging him to the car that was waiting for them.

"What happened anyway?" Meiling whispered to Syaoran when Xiao Long suddenly had to take a call from her agent. "It's not like you to be late."

"I was talking to Hiragizawa," he mumbled.

"You did _what_? And he actually talked to you? I'm impressed," she said. "I'm glad that you're starting to talk to them again. Does that mean that next time you'll try talking to Sakura…?" She trailed off, seeing the pain in his eyes. "I'm so sorry, Syaoran. I shouldn't push you. I'm just happy that you and Eriol have made up."

"Hiragizawa has every right to hate my guts," he said, staring out the window.

The day after Tomoyo's first lesson with him at the dojo, she had shown up at school as usual, with no mark on her cheek and her usual semi-chilly air wrapped around her. She'd avoided Eriol and gone straight to her chair, but smiled when she got to him and Sakura.

"Ohayo," she said happily, setting down her things.

"Hey, Tomoyo. You're looking lots better now. I guess you're sleeping all right now. Have you been cutting down on the coffee?" Sakura asked jokingly. Tomoyo simply nodded and pulled out a notebook and her pencil, putting them neatly in the center of her desk in preparation for the teacher's arrival.

"Glad you managed to cover up the bruise," he whispered in her ear. "What did your mom say about it?"

"Nothing—I put cover-up on it straight away," she answered softly. "And mother still isn't home yet. I meant that I was afraid that she'd see the film of the concert and get mad at me afterwards. But don't tell Sakura; I don't want her worrying about me. Or charging in there to tear Aoi apart limb from limb. Besides, Aoi would probably crush her."

"Understood," he murmured, just as Sakura said, "What are the two of you muttering about?"

"Nothing," they answered at the same time. Tomoyo shrugged. "I meant to say nothing all that important. Just… more stuff about my lesson tonight at the dojo."

Sakura quickly swallowed the lie, never doubting a single word. Tomoyo was smart enough to concoct a lie that actually held a grain of the truth. The dojo _was _involved in a way. Syaoran wondered where Tomoyo had learned to lie so well—the delivery was smooth and practiced, slipping off her tongue naturally. "Oh, so you went? What was it like? Are the other students friendly?"

Syaoran winced at Sakura's last question, but Tomoyo merely said, "The others are all right. Xiao Lang taught me a lot already." Syaoran smiled at the new name, but Sakura seemed to think that Tomoyo had said 'Syaoran', not 'Xiao Lang', and had dismissed it as something she'd just misheard. Tomoyo smiled a little at him before going on to say, "But I'm definitely going to have trouble catching up with the rest. They're all really good. I'm the only beginner there, so I really want to hurry it up as much as I can." She looked out the window instead of at her friend. "I want to be able to hold my own against them." _In case Aoi tries something again._

"Don't worry, I'll teach you," Syaoran murmured reassuringly in her ear.

"Hey," Eriol said, suddenly appearing in front of them. "What's up?"

Tomoyo jumped a little. She and Eriol had been avoiding each other ever since what she referred to when talking to Sakura as 'a misunderstanding between two friends'—in other words, the incident yesterday at the stair landing. "Not much," Syaoran said casually. Sakura felt horrible for Tomoyo, but she was also dying for them to be friends again. For all appearances, Eriol liked Tomoyo, even if the 'frost queen' wasn't exactly up to it. She just _had _to set them up!

"Kawaii," she whispered to herself, giggling madly at the thought. The other three exchanged looks.

"Syaoran," Eriol said conversationally, "is your girlfriend just laughing for no apparent reason?"

"Yeah."

"Crazy people do that."

Sakura flushed, and Tomoyo giggled. "I'm not crazy!" she wailed. She put her hands on her hips and glared at the two of them. "Honestly, Eriol. I thought you were the perfect gentleman, but _no_, you've turned into a Syaoran-type baboon."

"Hey!" Syaoran protested.

"Just kidding," she said sweetly, kissing him on the cheek and getting glittery peach lip gloss on his skin.

"You ought to wipe that off before the teacher sees," Eriol said.

Tomoyo avoided looking at Eriol, whom she knew quite well was staring at her. She conveniently hid behind a curtain of her shiny hair while pretending to rummage through her schoolbag for something. "What are you looking for?" he said, bending down to face her. "I'll help you look for it."

"Thank you Hiragizawa-san, but I'm all right, please don't bother—"

"Could you come with me for a second? Just to talk."

Hearts from Aries

"I seriously don't know why I'm doing this," Tomoyo said, hugging herself as she sat with him on the stair landing, ignoring the million and one lectures of Sonomi raging in her head about how dirty a place like this was—and here she was, sitting on the second-to-the last step on the stairs with a guy she seriously didn't want to be with right now. He had arranged for the teacher to be late again, although she was pretty sure that she really didn't want to know how he was doing that. She realized that she was only here because she didn't want to watch her best friend smearing lip gloss all over Xiao Lang's cheek. "What is it that you wanted to say to me, Hiragizawa-san?"

He hesitated before replying, the light flashing off his glasses. "Look, Tomoyo. Please. I know that something's wrong. And I really want to help you out." The reason why he'd liked Mizuki Kaho so much was because he could talk to her—really talk to her, about serious things. And then when he found Tomoyo, he'd realized that he could do that with her too. And that he liked her for a lot of reasons other than that. And that was why he'd broken it off with Kaho.

But Tomoyo wasn't talking to him, damn it.

"Hiragizawa-san…"

"No, stop it. I don't want to hear any more of the 'there's nothing wrong with me' spiel that you seem to know so well. Especially when you're being so absurdly formal with me." He looked at her, but she was trying to avoid his gaze. "I already know that something's wrong. I just want to hear it from you."

"If you think you know me so well, why don't you just tell me what you think is wrong with me?" she said, finally losing her patience. God, what was his problem? She'd tried to let him off as nicely as possible, but it just wasn't working.

He was glad that she was getting mad at him. It was better than talking to ice.

"You're lonely."

She stared at him, flabbergasted, as those two words settled heavily on the two of them in momentary silence. "That's all you can say?" she hissed. "_I'm lonely_? That really simplifies things, doesn't it?"

What was it about her? He couldn't charm her as easily as he had charmed so many others, even without meaning to. He was Clow Reed, for God's sake. But she remained out of his league. "Tomoyo, I'm sorry. I didn't mean for it to come out like that."

"What is your _problem, _Eriol? Do you want me to want someone like you—Clow Reed? Do you think I even _can_ when…?"

He stared at her in shock. She was swiping lightly at her eyes as she spoke and she ducked her head. "It's so much easier for me to love someone whom you can't ever reach. If I know that it's hopeless from the very beginning, then I don't have to hope… and I don't have to worry whether I might destroy my friendship or not. At least I can just look away… why won't you let it stay that way?"

"Is that how you feel?" he asked her, tilting her chin up so that he could look fully into her face. He had wondered, for a long time, whether she was in love; he got that feeling sometimes when he was near her—that she was crazy about someone, deep down. He hadn't imagined that it would turn out to be like this. She was afraid. He felt his arms involuntarily enveloping her and for once she didn't push him away or make some excuse. "That's all you think of me as—Clow Reed? I thought I'd made it abundantly clear how I feel about you, Tomoyo."

She didn't answer, and he honestly felt that he didn't need her to.

"I'm Clow Reed. Big deal, Tomoyo. More than that, I'm just Hiragizawa Eriol. I can't be what I used to be. That's all in the past now. Clow was… I don't know… I feel that maybe he was wrong, making me this way. I'll never be like him. And even he wasn't infallible, Tomoyo. He predicted… he… well, he was sure that I would…"

"Miss Mizuki," she said clearly.

"Yes. But I couldn't. That's why…" She said nothing more.

"Are you all right?" he asked her. She was so cold in his arms. He wondered whether he should try to read her mind. It was only with difficulty that he restrained himself from doing so. Syaoran and Sakura were right. He'd been abusing his magic a lot lately, but he would be damned before he'd use it on her for something as personal as this.

She nodded, almost violently, but stayed in the embrace. "Yeah, I am. Sorry for causing you so much trouble, Eriol. I guess I've just been in an emotional funk these days." She sighed, brushing the hair out of her eyes. "I don't know what to think anymore, Eriol. I just don't feel that it's right to do this. It just isn't fair." She turned eyes that still glistened with the remnants of her little crying jag up to him. "I just wish…"

"Tomoyo. Will you be my girlfriend?"

She stared at him. The question just came suddenly out of the blue. Even he looked surprised. But he didn't take it back.

"KAWAII!"

Amazingly enough, it didn't come from Tomoyo. They both looked up to see Syaoran and Sakura racing down to meet them—Syaoran looked sheepish, while Sakura had stars in her eyes as she dragged him down along with her.

"You guys were spying?" Tomoyo said in disbelief.

"Spying is such an ugly word," Sakura said breezily, although a flash of guilt tempered her words. "I'm sorry, Tomoyo. It's just that—"

"—you guys were getting kind of late in coming back, so Sakura and I decided to come searching for you," Syaoran finished smoothly, although he flinched as he said the words. He looked uncomfortably at Tomoyo, trying to conceal his embarrassment at being caught in a situation like this. "Uh… we didn't really expect to interrupt… so, uh, we were just going…"

Sakura planted a mischievous kiss on his cheek in the middle of her giddy hyper high for her best friend. "You're so kawaii when you blush. You guys better finish up," she added to Eriol with a smile as she dragged Syaoran back up the stairs towards the classroom.

Eriol's face was red when he looked back at Tomoyo, although he hadn't allowed it to show when Syaoran and Sakura had been there. She looked just about ready to faint, and he half-cursed in his head at their friends' sudden appearance. She looked as though she wanted to die.

She turned to him with a hopeless sort of face that quickly rearranged itself into the usual nonchalant façade.

"Yes, Eriol."

Hearts from Aries

"You're being extremely rude." Meiling interrupted his thoughts with her comment and by the way she set her knife down with a metallic noise onto the table. "Syaoran? I bet you haven't even heard one word that I've said."

"Sorry," he said, abashed. "I was just… thinking."

"Goody. That doesn't happen very often, so let's forgive him this one time," she told Xiao Long with a snort and an eye-roll. Xiao Long looked at him with a frown on her face.

"You were like that when you woke up too," she said softly. "Um, the first time you woke up, I mean. Is there something wrong, Li-kun?" It was the first time that she addressed him by the more familiar honorific rather than the typical 'san'.

"It's nothing," he said.

Tomoyo had appeared in the dojo again that evening, her face scrubbed free of the cover-up and defiantly displaying the bruise on her cheek. She smiled sweetly at Aoi when she walked past the girl but Syaoran could feel the frostiness radiating from her eyes. Aoi blanched but continued warming up.

"Hey, Xiao Lang," she said, her face splitting into a smile when she saw him. "Ouch," she muttered aside, touching a finger to her cheek for a nanosecond.

"Still hurts? You didn't show any sign of it at all earlier," he commented, examining it closely. "Most of the swelling's gone down though. I was surprised that you could grin like that in class with the bruise, but you're a lot tougher than you look."

"Yeah," she agreed, grinning even wider when she looked at Aoi, who flinched again under Tomoyo's penetrating gaze—of the kind that she used to give Sakura when she had another costume design dancing in her head. This was a side of her he'd never seen before. "So, ready to teach me, sensei?"

"Oh God. Li-san was bad enough," he complained.

She smiled as she dropped into a fighting stance. They'd both agreed to warm up on the way to the dojo instead of doing it while they were with each other to avoid wasting time. She had confided to him over the cellphone that she really wanted to catch up with the rest of them, or at least go up a belt. Everyone else was on the other side of the dojo, and besides, they had made sure to pick out a deserted corner all to themselves. She picked things up quickly and he had already managed to teach her a couple of techniques, although she was definitely going to have to work _a lot _harder if she wanted to catch up with the rest, let alone him. "I feel the need to take out a little energy first."

"Oh really?" he said, raising an eyebrow. To tell the truth, he was apprehensive about taking her on, if only because he was concerned that he would hurt her. "Even considering the fact that you barely know two moves?"

"So?" she returned.

"Have it your way."

He made his moves gentler than he would normally have, controlling them so that his punches became light taps. She knew that he was holding back but didn't complain; he was just trying to protect her, and he would probably have killed her anyway if he used his full potential.

"So," he said, noting the misty sweat the beaded her forehead even as he administered another gentle tap onto her right shoulder. "Tired?"

"Nope," she lied.

"Good. So let's have a little chat while we're doing this," he said with a grin. He was teasing her, and she raised her chin defiantly back at him, as though daring him to say another word. He decided to push her buttons a little. "I'm sorry I interrupted your little lovey-dovey fest awhile ago."

_Wham! _

The next thing he knew, he was staggering back, and Tomoyo looked with astonishment at her raised foot, which had caught him squarely in the base of the throat. She wasn't the only one staring; their other classmates had stopped training to see him choking and straining for air. "Did I just do that?" she said, stunned, proud and scared in the same moment.

"Yes," he managed to gasp out, clutching his neck. "That was… good. Very good."

"Sorry," she said guiltily. "I didn't mean to hurt you. You okay?"

"I'll live," he said with a chuckle. It had fazed him for a moment, but he quickly brushed it aside. "Killer kick, though."

She went closer to inspect his face—partly to see whether he was hurt and partly so that she could tell whether he was lying or not. Satisfied, she moved away leaving only her delicate fragrance of lavender. "I hope I didn't do any lasting damage."

"Like I said, I'll live."

"But I won't, because Sakura will kill me when she finds out—_ack!_" And with a sweep of his foot, she was sent tumbling to the floor. She remembered to slam on the mats to protect herself just in time and looked up at him with something between amusement and irritation.

He laughed and extended a hand to help her up. "There, now Hiragizawa will kill me too. That'll be fun; we can haunt them from the afterlife together." She took his hand and gave it an almighty yank, driving him down to his knees beside her. She had had the advantage of surprise—_again!_—when otherwise she would never have been able to budge him an inch.

"Don't tease me about Hiragizawa-san," she managed to say, breathing hard from his right side.

"You call your boyfriend 'Hiragizawa-san'?" he snorted, not bothering to get up from his position on the mats. It was actually quite comfortable, just lying there. He ignored the stares that he was receiving from some of his companions and just listened to Tomoyo's slowly steadying breathing. "I thought you would call him something like 'sweetheart' or 'babycakes' or 'kissy bear' or maybe 'honey pie' or even 'honey dumpling', but then you have a flair for the elaborate so it would probably be something like 'smoochums-coochums baby-poo—"

"Eriol, then," she amended. "And I still can't believe that you guys were listening in on us!" Her cheeks turned pink and she sat up, the ends of her long hair tickling his skin as she turned to look at him, the dark ponytail falling like a river brushing his face. "That was a low blow. Do I ever tease you about all the horrendously naughty things that Sakura tells me about?"

"No, because she doesn't tell you."

She looked stung at that last comment but the expression quickly slipped away as she recovered her typical relaxed face. "Yeah, well, I'm kind of glad; I don't really know what I'd do if I had to listen to all that mushy stuff about the two of you ogling each other and doing 'you-know-what' at 'you-know-where'." She winked at him.

It worked; he flushed. "You—I…"

"Don't get all bothered, Syaoran," she said dismissively. She acted so much older than she really was, and she was actually effective at playing that part too. "What I don't know, I can guess, and guess very accurately at that."

"Then tell me, do you really love Hiragizawa?"

She blanched. "I'm not… I don't really know," she reflected, one finger idly twining a strand of her hair around it, winding it into a thick cylinder around her pinkie. "I could learn to, if I so decided to."

"So you don't?"

"It's really complicated."

"Then you _do._"

She reddened noticeably, the crimson blush staining her cheeks like wine spilled on snow. "I don't think that you know what you're talking about here, Xiao Lang. There are people like you and then there are people like me. You're the kind that would never get my philosophy on love."

"I heard it," he said casually. "You think that it's safer to just hide whatever feelings you have. To just squash them and be happy when the person that you love is happy. Kind of like being a guardian ghost, watching them from afar but never being able to act on what your heart says." _You were talking about Sakura, weren't you?_

"It just so happens that I love differently," she said. _You're kind, Xiao Lang, but there's no way that I can tell you what I'm feeling. _"Isn't it easier, never having to wake up and wonder whether I'll get hurt or whether I'll be the one hurting someone? The way things were was perfect. But it's all one big complicated mess now." She sighed and hugged her knees to her chest.

"If you really believed that, why did you encourage me to tell Sakura the way I felt?"

She looked maddeningly amused. "I thought it was obvious, Syaoran. You would either have told her or gone mad."

"And isn't that what's happening to you?"

"… Yes."

Hearts from Aries

_Why does she stay when it's sheer madness?_ He fumed inwardly. In some way he had become sort of like a guardian angel, always watching her like a hawk. Especially when she was with her so-called boyfriend, Eriol. It didn't help that Valentine's Day was just a week after the two of them hooked up. And unfortunately, the dreaded event was already here.

He hated Valentine's. The girls, squealing and giggling over the balloons and streamers and the other pink-and-white nonsense hanging in the classroom because their fool of a teacher was a romantic type. The boys bragging about how many girls gave them stuff. The girls comparing who they would give chocolates and cards to. The boys mumbling about what a hassle it was to have to confess their feelings. Chiharu hitting Yamazaki. Rika's face red as a tomato when she came back from the faculty room, clutching an enormous bouquet after dropping off a box of sweets that she'd made herself. And Naoko substituting her typical mystery books for a romance novel, for once.

"Is something wrong, Syaoran?" Sakura asked, brow furrowed as she squinted at him. "You have a really weird expression on your face. Almost like you're in pain or something. Don't you feel well?"

He dropped his scowl immediately. "I'm fine," he said with a tight smile. That was one thing that he had to keep reminding himself about: never ever show his bad side to Sakura.

Tomoyo and Eriol were talking by themselves in one corner of the classroom, looking absurdly like an advertisement for romance. The good-looking pair was already one of the 'it' couples of the school. A rare breeze came in and stirred their hair, blowing it dramatically so that Tomoyo's lavender-black locks gently brushed against Eriol's shoulder. He muttered darkly to himself. The wind rarely ever came in the classroom windows; it was like even nature was on their side or something.

Sakura followed his gaze. "Oh, them. Aren't they the sweetest?"

"Ugh."

"You just hate Eriol, that's all."

As though she'd sensed them looking at her, Tomoyo suddenly turned and caught his eye. She smiled, and then turned back to Eriol and said something that made him laugh. Then she stood up and made her way over to them.

"Hey," she said. "Having lots of fun drinking in this hormone-charged atmosphere?" Even as she said the words, Chiharu threw a book at Yamazaki. They giggled nervously. "At least it looks like _that _couple is having fun."

"Um… yeah," Syaoran agreed. Suddenly Rika stopped by and engaged Sakura in conversation, leaving the talking to just the two of them.

"I take it that Valentine's Day isn't really your thing," she offered. "That's okay. I'm not really interested in all this romance-blah-blah either. It gets kind of dead, after a while. I understand falling in love with a person and all that, but…" She just shrugged. "You get my point."

"Yeah. I mean, it's okay, the whole present thing, but it's just… I don't know. Too commercialized, I guess. It kind of loses the meaning."

"True. Of course I still give and take the gifts—it would be rude not to—but… well, that's just it." She bit her lip, glancing over at Eriol pensively. He smiled back at her, and Syaoran frowned. He noticed the expensive box of chocolates on Eriol's desk.

"Godiva. That's a lot of cash, Tomoyo."

She snorted. "You act as though you aren't even wealthier than me. But that's neither here nor there, Xiao Lang." Tentatively, she placed a box of chocolates on his desk. "I hope you like them."

He was taken aback for a moment. "Thanks," he said, reddening slightly. He had received lots of presents from different girls, and it had pretty much embarrassed him. But Tomoyo was his friend—the other girls were just trash waiting for him to dump Sakura. "I'm sorry, I don't have anything for you."

"It's okay. I didn't give it to you because I expected anything in return. Besides, I know that you don't like Valentine's Day all that much. The only reason why you put up with it is Sakura, right?"

"Yeah. I got her flowers and chocolates and stuff."

"What did she get you?"

He flushed and mumbled something inaudible.

"Hmm? I didn't quite catch that."

"A teddy bear."

She let out a laugh. "That's just like Sakura, isn't it?"

He changed the subject quickly. "Do you mind if I try these chocolates?"

"No, go right ahead."

He tore apart the purple wrapping paper with a grin as he uncovered a plain black box. "What, no Godiva?"

"No, sorry. You're not on that level."

"So on what level am I?"

Her smile this time was a little sad. "A bad one." She shrugged. "I just ran out of pocket money before the end of the day, so I ended up making yours by myself. I hope you don't mind."

He got flustered. "You didn't have to go through all that trouble—"

"Don't be silly," she said. "You really are an impossible person. It wasn't anything much. I'm going to go back to Eriol now, okay? Enjoy the sweets."

"Uh, okay. Thanks."

Sakura turned back to him. "Rika and I were just talking about this really cute tradition called White Day where you're supposed to return Valentine gifts to the people whom you love. Do you guys have something like that in Hong Kong?"

"Not really," he said.

"But since you gave me those flowers and stuff, I guess White Day isn't really applicable," she sighed. "Oh well. It was a nice thought, though."

"Hey, did you go shopping with Tomoyo for her present for Eriol?"

"Uh-huh. She got stuff for me and her mom too."

"She really shouldn't overspend like that."

Sakura let out a laugh. "Overspend? Are you crazy? Tomoyo had more money than what my dad makes in a month even after she finished shopping. She could have bought out the whole candy shop if she'd wanted to."

"Really…" He opened the black box. Inside were eight chocolates, each painstakingly carved into different shapes: a wolf, a sword, the yin-yang symbol, a cherry blossom, the Li family crest (now how in the world had she thought _that _up?), a phoenix, a dragon and lastly, a forget-me-not—the only symbol that had no direct link to him or his Chinese heritage. He glanced over at her and saw her purple eyes watching them, although she was too far away to hear their conversation. She cocked her head to one side questioningly and raised an eyebrow.

He just shook his head slightly so that Sakura wouldn't notice while she babbled on about all the things that they'd picked up at the mall—a gold bracelet for Sonomi, a new dress for Sakura, and so on.

Then Sakura lit up as the bell rang. "Oh, thank goodness school's over. Are we still set for our little dinner plan tonight?"

"Yeah, but afterwards I still have training at the dojo."

"Tomoyo said the same thing to Eriol," she said. "Even if they _are _going to some fancy restaurant and all that. I'm almost tempted to stalk them." She giggled. "Just because they're a really _kawaii _couple, and I think that the two of them really make each other happy."

For the first time since the two of them had become a couple—perhaps even the first time since he had fallen in love with her—he stared at her in disgust. Did she really not see what was going on with her own best friend? He just couldn't believe it. When they were younger, she and Tomoyo had been basically inseparable.

"Come on, let's go," he muttered, picking up his bag and the chocolates—so preoccupied in his thoughts that he didn't even notice that he had unintentionally left behind the teddy bear that Sakura had given him and she had to remind him.

MAA-chan: Happy birthday Sakura! April 1, 2007. Okay, that was a REALLY long chapter that I edited over and over again... the whole Valentine's Day/White Day thing just suddenly popped up, because it was originally not supposed to be there; in fact, this chapter was only supposed to be the first bit plus the last parts of the next chapter.

Can someone please tell me whether I got the whole White Day thing right? Because honestly, I have no idea. We don't have customs like that in my country. Valentine's Day is one big shebang with cheap roses and chocolate. Heck, some of the girls here even buy flowers for themselves. Kind of embarrassing, but true. I hate Valentine's Day.

Plus: I'm working on an extension of this fic called "Between Midnight and Dawn", but the lack of readership for "An Unexpected Love" is discouraging. Should I discontinue it?

I reply to all reviews. Yes, ALL reviews. But please be a little more in-depth than "Nice" or "Update please" (although I've been guilty of that too). I like to incorporate my reader's ideas into my story, although I don't always.


	5. Chapter 5

"You're shopping for a White Day present?" Meiling asked suspiciously over the phone, her voice coming out in a tinny, static-filled blare that was even more shrewish than her normal high-pitched tones. "I thought that you didn't go for those traditions. And that you'd already given Sakura a Valentine's Day present."

"It's not for Sakura."

The silence stretched on for so long that he thought that they'd been cut off. "Hello? Hello? Meiling, are you still there? Damned international phone calls. Completely pointless—"

"_You're cheating on Sakura?_ And with her best friend no less!"

"No," he said flatly. "Whatever put _that _into your head all of the sudden?"

"Well… you're suddenly buying presents for other girls…" Meiling stated uncomfortably. Then she let out a short laugh, lightening up. "Or is it for a guy? Or is it for me, your favorite cousin in all the whole wide world?"

"In your dreams," he snorted. "No, it's for Tomoyo. She got me a present for Valentine's Day." It was almost a shame to eat the chocolates; they had been works of art. So he had taken a photograph of them—pretending that he didn't know exactly how stupid he looked, never mind whether he was alone in the apartment when he'd done it—before sinking his teeth into the first bittersweet bite of dark chocolate. "And I didn't have anything for her then, so I think that I should return the favor."

"Oh yeah, those chocolates. Tomoyo mentioned that to me," Meiling mused. "Well, if you want my advice, make her something yourself. She'll appreciate it more. There's nothing that you can buy that she can't buy herself; it's not like with Sakura, where you can just throw around wads of cash and fulfill her every little whim."

"I hate making arts and crafts. I suck at that."

"Then don't bother," she said coolly. "If you're not going to make more of an effort than you normally do, you'll just end up making a mess. You ought to know that Tomoyo made those sweets all by herself."

"All right, all right. Yeesh."

"Be sure to make it better than anything that you ever have before," she instructed him. "Or else you'll be hearing from me. I'll fly all the way to Japan to kill you."

"Meiling, you know that I'm better than you at martial arts."

She snickered. "Yeah, but it isn't like you'd hit a girl."

"True. I'm too much of a gentleman to do something like that."

"You mean that you're a gullible and pompous prick," she said in a mockingly docile tone. "So how's Sakura, by the way?"

"She's okay. We went to the movies last night."

"That's all you guys ever do," she sighed. "I bet that gets kind of boring."

"It's a different movie every time," he pointed out.

"But the same girl, no matter how much time passes."

Hearts from Aries

* * *

White Day was almost as bad as Valentine's Day. The girls were still giggling like airheads, the boys were still mumbling amongst themselves—the only difference was that it was more subdued, because although nearly everyone celebrated Valentine's Day, only a very few did on White Day.

"Did Eriol give you anything?" Chiharu was asking Tomoyo. She was more cheerful today because for once, Yamazaki had done something right and gotten her a cute bouquet of white daisies and told her that they reminded him of her—spunky, fresh, original and energetic.

"Uh-huh. But that guy seizes just about every opportunity to show off how romantic he can supposedly be," Tomoyo said with a half-hearted giggle, pointing a finger at her desk.

"_Wow!_" Chiharu said, staring at the mountain of chocolate boxes and bouquets piled on Tomoyo's table. Compared to all that, her daisies suddenly seemed pathetic. "Eriol sure knows how to treat his lady."

"You rang?" Eriol offered, slipping up behind Tomoyo and wrapping an arm around her shoulders. "Hello, gorgeous."

"They're not all from Eriol, actually," Tomoyo said. "This cheapskate over here just go me one measly box and a single bunch of flowers. The rest are from other guys."

Eriol pretended to scowl. "I got you imported chocolates in a gold box and those flowers are your favorites," he said, pointing out the biggest bouquet of all, a gorgeous mix of forget-me-nots and lavender. "You wound me deeply, Tomoyo darling."

Chiharu frowned. "You mean that guys still get you lots of stuff even though you two are the 'it' couple of the school?"

"Sure. I mean, they still get Eriol stuff for Valentine's Day, and I don't care in the least. I think I would be pretty disturbed if I didn't get anything, actually—that would mean that my popularity ratings have gone down," Tomoyo joked, grinning.

Syaoran scowled at himself, shaking his head at his stupidity and trying to ignore the mini-Everest on the table beside Sakura's. He looked at the thin package underneath his seat and pretended that it didn't exist. If only he could dispose of it somehow without being caught…

"Yukito-san!"

Sakura's happy voice grated against his ears. He groaned inwardly as the silver-haired young man came in, followed by Sakura's brother Touya. "Hello, Sakura. How are you? Did you get my White Day present?"

"Yes!" she said blissfully. Even if she did have Syaoran, Yukito still made her feel floaty sometimes. Just because he was Yukito. "Thank you very much."

"We need a desk or two for the auditorium… and since your class was so close by, we were hoping to borrow a couple," Touya said shortly.

"There are nearer classrooms…" Sakura mumbled.

"Nah. He just wanted to make sure that no one gave you a White Day gift," Yukito said with a chuckle.

"The brat better not have given you any," Touya grumbled.

"Well, he doesn't have to worry about that. He didn't."

"What! I thought he was your boyfriend. Doesn't he appreciate you at all?"

The rest of the class watched this with amusement. Syaoran just glowered at him from his chair, and Touya frowned; obviously the brat was in a bad mood. He made no comment, just negotiated with their class president for a couple of desks that they were apparently in need of as temporary props at the auditorium. Yukito wandered over to Syaoran with a tentative smile.

"Hello. Something the matter?"

Syaoran's stomach flip-flopped as well. Like Sakura, he also sometimes still got floaty around Yukito. "It's nothing," he grumbled, trying to cover up the pink tint of his cheeks. "I'm fine."

Yukito caught sight of the package hidden underneath. "Is that a White Day present?"

"Yeah, but now I really don't feel like giving it," he said with a sigh. "Sakura and I both agreed not to celebrate White Day but see, Tomoyo gave me a present on Valentine's so I thought I'd repay her with a White Day gift. But now…" He jerked his head at the gifts that Tomoyo had already amassed. "Who am I kidding?" And why was he telling all this to Yukito?

"That's Tomoyo's seat," Yukito said quietly.

"Yeah." He looked up at him with a frown. "Don't get the wrong idea. I'm just thanking her because she gave me a really wonderful present on Valentine's and that makes me feel bad."

"Did the other girls get you presents on Valentine's Day?"

"Well… yeah. But that's different!"

Finally Yukito grabbed the package. "Ack! Stop!" Syaoran hissed, turning bright red, but no one else had seen anything—they were all focused on Touya and Sakura bickering.

Yukito drifted away from him. "Tomoyo-chan, you dropped this package," he said charmingly, holding it out to her.

Tomoyo didn't even stop to question him. Perhaps all those years with 'Cardcaptor Sakura' had taught her that around this crowd, anything could happen, so she might as well accept immediately. "Thank you very much, Yukito-san."

"Yuki! We have to go. Now." Touya was already dragging along two desks.

"Ah, sorry Touya," Yukito said, hurrying out after him and grabbing the other two desks that their class had offered. He smiled at Syaoran and Sakura before he left.

Later that evening Syaoran passed by the Daidouji residence (quite by accident, really) and saw her maids loading up the chocolate and flowers into a car and as she was barking orders into her cellphone. "Yes, all those are to go the orphanage."

"But young mistress, are you sure we should really dispose of all your White Day presents? Some of these were quite expensive. This one is in a gold box—"

She looked away. "Keep the box then, he might look for it if he comes over and then there'll be trouble if I don't have it. But give the chocolates to the kids."

One of them held out his package, and he cringed. If he had known it would go to the orphanage… well, at least it was a good cause.

"No, leave that one," Tomoyo said softly.

"Young mistress…?"

"I said leave it," she said, her voice suddenly sharp. "It's the only one I want to keep.'"

Syaoran was glad that it was dark, so no one could see his face burning as he sprinted off into the night. A girl with lavender-black hair smiled to herself as she listened to the clatter of his footsteps on the pavement.

Hearts from Aries

* * *

Tomoyo padded into the dojo, enjoying the feel of the rubber mats against her bare feet. She knew that they were disgusting and probably hadn't been cleaned in God knew how long (heaven only knew what her mother would have said), but she didn't really care. "Hi," she called out to him.

"Hey," he said. "Uh... guess we'd better start…"

"Thank you so much for the lovely present," she said, knowing that he was feeling awkward and unsure of how to bring it up. "I didn't know that you could paint like that, Xiao Lang. Usually you hate art class."

"I just… made a little more of an effort," he said slowly.

Was it imagination or reality that her eyes seemed to soften, or that the faintest hint of fuchsia bloomed on her cheeks? She didn't smile, but there was something about the way she looked that told him that she was happy. "Thank you."

Suddenly, her cellphone rang. "Oh, bother, bother, bother," she muttered angrily as she answered it. "Moshimoshi?" Her face changed. "Oh, mother. I… you need it faxed right away? I'm in the middle of a class—speak to my teacher? Well, he's kind of out… of course I really am at a class. The teacher just seems to be sick, that's all, but the students are still practicing. I… no. Couldn't one of the maids or the bodyguards do it? Oh. I see."

Syaoran looked at her with concern as she spoke. "I _do _know the importance of the meeting. Yes, yes, you told me all about it—a huge order that will garner a lot of money for Daidouji Corporation," she said tonelessly. "I am _not _being rebellious for no reason. 'I'll go home and do it, all right?" She clicked off without waiting for a response. "I'm sorry, Xiao Lang. It looks like I'll have to skip our training session tonight."

"I'll go with you," he said firmly; offering, but at the same time insisting. "It isn't good for you to wander the streets by yourself, and if I know you, you aren't going to call your bodyguards to pick you up."

"The streets of Tomoeda are perfectly safe," she protested. "But thank you, I wouldn't mind some company on the way back—but you still have training to do."

"Don't be stupid, I could beat anyone here with two hands tied behind my back."

A smile tugged at her lips. "True." She peeled off her white _gi_ to reveal a peony-colored t-shirt underneath. "We aren't supposed to go out in public in our _gi_'s because they're an invitation for trouble. That's what you told me, remember?"

"Right," he laughed as he showed her his own black shirt.

"Won't you come in? The house is pretty much empty except for me and the maids," she said when they'd gotten to the gates of her enormous house. "Maybe have some tea? I feel awful about disrupting our training schedule. It's the least I can do."

"You didn't do anything wrong," he protested, but she still dragged him in, ignoring his assurances that she didn't need to.

"Young mistress, you're home early," one of the maids said, evidently surprised. "We didn't expect you to come home for another hour at the very least."

"Ah, that's right. My mother called me back to run a short errand for her," Tomoyo said, nibbling on her lower lip. "Could you please bring tea for two up to my room? Chocolate-chip and raspberry. Thank you."

"Uh… your room?" Syaoran said.

"Uh-huh. Is that a big deal?" Her eyes twinkled. "I'm not going to seduce you, Xiao Lang." She let out a sigh. "It's just that the rest of the rooms in the house are too big. I feel like a pea rattling around those huge rooms. You'll see what I mean." As she guided him to her room, he saw the size of the other rooms and privately agreed with her. "I chose my bedroom to be the smallest in the whole house—even smaller than the bathrooms, actually. But even with that, mine is still pretty big."

The maid came in with a tray laden with scones and tea. "Scones?" Syaoran inquired.

"Yeah," she said. "Partly due to Eriol's influence. But they really are delicious. Please have some. I'm just going to fax those papers for my mother—I have to grab them from her library. Is it okay if I leave you for a while?"

"Sure, go right ahead," he said, accepting the cup of tea she offered him (he didn't touch the scones, though). His eyes wandered around the rest of the room when she left and he frowned at the load of professional-looking gadgets in her room. Aside from the video cameras that she loved carrying around when she was younger, there was a state-of-the-art laptop and a fax machine. _For her mother,_ he supposed.

The room was decorated in shades of cream and lilac, tasteful, elegant and mature. It was distinctly Tomoyo. And it was cozy too. He smiled at the neat row of books in the shelves—almost obsessive in their arrangement, each spine perfectly aligned, in alphabetical order. She had a lot of closets (oh dear; he cringed as he recalled her mania for costumes and clothing) and a seamstresses doll over in the side, full of pins. It was the only slightly messy part of the room—it had some pieces of black and crimson cloth on the floor beside the mannequin. It looked like she was making a jacket or something. Finally he caved and grabbed one of the chocolate-chip scones. She was right; they were delicious.

The painting hanging right above her bed caught his eye. It was of a girl with lavender-black hair twined with forget-me-nots, wearing a white dress as she sat with her legs tucked underneath her. She wasn't smiling, but her violet eyes reached out to you in a way that wasn't sad, wasn't happy, wasn't angry—it was an emotion that couldn't be described. He liked the way it had turned out; without a doubt, it was the best thing that he had ever made. What he couldn't explain was the last element of the picture.

The amber-eyed wolf, lying placidly beside her, her hand stroking its fur.

Tomoyo returned, carrying a pile of papers. "Ugh, these horrible business things," she said, shaking her head. She followed his gaze. "That's very beautiful," she told him. "I'll treasure it forever."

"It's… not that good," he said finally.

"I think it is." She fed the papers into the fax machine. "I like the basic composition itself, but more because of the feeling I get from it."

His brow furrowed. "What feeling?"

"Like it's watching over me. It makes me feel safe. And… well, loved," she said, blushing at her own boldness. She hoped that he wouldn't interpret her remark in such a way that she was hitting on him or something.

"Hey, you want to catch a movie tomorrow?" he asked randomly. She blinked at him, and he turned red and rushed to explain. "I mean… well, after our training session. I think Sakura's brother doesn't like me taking her out every night and besides, I thought that you might like seeing this great film. It's this martial arts movie from Hong Kong. And, well, since you're a martial arts student like me, I thought you might appreciate it—"

With a smile, she cut through his babbling. "I'd love to."

Hearts from Aries

* * *

"I'm sorry we were such poor company, Li-kun," Xiao Lang said in a low voice as they exited, Meiling walking a good twenty paces in front of them barking out orders to her harried assistant over the cellphone. "I hope it doesn't bother you, but Eriol told me a little bit about what… about what happened before."

"I'm going to beat up Hiragizawa," he said flatly.

"But from what I understand, Li-kun, she made choices. You all did. You weren't in the wrong, not once. If there was anyone who should have been blamed, it was her."

He froze. "_You don't know _anything _about her,_" he hissed.

Tomoyo nodded as she spoke into the phone, her voice hollow even as she added a cheerful trill to her words. "Yes, mother. I received your present just this morning. It's lovely. How's the weather over there? Lovely. Yes, yes, I understand. And we saw each other just a couple of days ago. I know that this business deal is really important and—yeah, okay." She gave away nothing as she kept talking, shrinking away from the scrutiny of her friends—Sakura, Eriol, Syaoran, Touya, Yukito and Nakuru. It was a small gathering of all the people involved in the cards, which simplified things; now Kero could come out and eat with them. "Of course we'll do something when you get back." _Like you always say and we never do. _"Bye."

"Hey, you okay?" Eriol asked gently.

"Yes," she said, smiling back at him. "Mother's just very busy these days—there are a lot of foreign investors interested in Daidouji Corp."

"I think it's impossible for someone to be so busy that she can't see her only child on said only child's birthday," he muttered.

"If anyone can do it, it's mother. Don't judge her like that. She has to be there if she's going to shoot all the investors who won't budge, right? She cares—and her gift is amazing." She held up one hand from which hung an amethyst bracelet with stones that exactly matched the color of her eyes. "Can we please change the subject?" she asked, putting on a perfect puppy-dog pout. Irresistible.

"Happy birthday," he said, kissing her on the cheek and deciding to drop the subject for her sake. She raised her face up to him and kissed him back. They were still tentatively in love, walking on eggshells around each other, even though they'd been together for a solid two months now—the so-called 'it' couple. Sakura was hyper-happy for them. The rest of her friends thought that they were adorable—most of them, anyway.

Syaoran, however, felt that she'd gone in way over her head.

_She loves Sakura, idiot. What right did I have to take away her best friend? They knew each other long before I came here. It isn't fair to her. She's so lonely. I can't do anything but be selfish. That's the only reason why she's gone with Eriol, isn't it? They'll both end up burned, at this rate._

"No thinking," Tomoyo ordered, catching his eye. "I can practically hear your thoughts all the way from across the room, Xiao Lang."

His cheeks flamed at that comment and she giggled, choosing to interpret it in another manner—one that was a lot less mature than his thoughts, that was for sure.

"Don't worry, I won't tell Sakura about that overwhelmingly _mature _image that you had in your mind—"

"What?" Sakura sputtered, nearly dropping the slice of cake that Eriol had just passed her. Tomoyo's boyfriend was unable to suppress the grin unfurling on his face like the breaking of sunrise, while Touya was already moving towards Syaoran, and he probably would have reached him if Yukito hadn't grabbed him by the arm. Even if Touya was the stronger and taller of the two, Yukito could put him in his place easily.

"Kidding." Tomoyo held up one hand to indicate peace. "Don't be so jumpy about the little things, Sakura. And thank you for your present. I love it." She smiled at the childish teddy bear that Sakura had chosen to give her. "It's… adorable." She had outgrown those silly things, for heaven's sake. Sakura just didn't get her anymore. Neither did Chiharu or Naoko or even Rika, who had seemed the most frighteningly grown-up of all of them. Her own maturity was different. And now that she was sixteen, she felt it all the more keenly.

"Going to name it Eriol?" Sakura teased.

Tomoyo just smiled mysteriously at her boyfriend, her eyes unreadable. "Nope," she answered, pretending to think it over carefully. "I think I'll name it Kissy Bear Flower Sparkle. I think that that's a much better name, don't you?"

He laughed good-naturedly. "Mmph. Just count your blessings that it's your birthday, so you're entitled to one free insult. And what about _my _present? Or are you so busy swooning over Kissy Bear Flower Sparkle that you forgot mine?"

He handed her a small red velvet box. "I hope you like it."

There was a short pause before everyone started speaking out at once.

"God, Eriol, she's only sixteen!" Yukito said in horror. "Yue's already delivering a lecture in my head about how irresponsible it is to expect her to elope with you and forget all her responsibilities just because you're free to do as you please and could you _please _make him stop? I don't see why I have to suffer because of your hormone-driven choices—"

"_I _think it's absurdly romantic," Nakuru interjected.

"So do I, but Tomoyo's only sixteen!" Sakura blurted out anxiously. "I mean, Yukito's right. Eriol, she's too young. And even if you _are _the reincarnation of a wait, I don't know how old he is well, God knows how old magician, biologically you're also sixteen. You're rushing into things. You should give it more time and—"

"Just remember that when the brat proposes to you, _kaijuu_," Touya told her matter-of-factly, shaking his head in obvious disapproval.

"I'M NOT A MONSTER!" she yelled at him, stomping on his foot. He let out a howl of pain. Ever since she'd taken to wearing heels, wedges, platforms and the like, Touya had been avoiding calling her a monster—but there were times when he forgot her footwear and just went ahead with his brotherly instincts. Unfortunately for him, she was wearing the two-inch heeled boots that Tomoyo had given her as a present last Christmas. "And Syaoran isn't a brat either," she added as an afterthought while Touya cursed, hopping up and down on one foot.

"I'm not proposing!" Eriol said loudly over their speculation and opinions, effectively shutting them up. "She's only sixteen, you said it for yourselves. Honestly. You people all jump to conclusions." Tomoyo opened the box slowly, revealing a ring with a silver musical note on it. ("It's _still _a ring and if those are diamonds, I think he's going too far," muttered Yue in Yukito's head—and they really _were _diamonds, not that Eriol couldn't spare the money anyway). "It's beautiful," she said as he slipped it on her finger—on the left ring finger, not the right, naturally; it wouldn't do for anyone to get the wrong impression. He kissed her hand while Sakura and Nakuru giggled. "Thanks, Eriol."

"Can't you thank a guy better than that?"

She kissed him quickly on the cheek. "Watch it," she warned him when he opened his mouth to speak again, knowing that he was about to say something improper. He shut up but still grinned at her. Syaoran shook his head and downed his drink, turning away from them. She was a good actress, he had to admit, and played the part of the dedicated, beautiful girlfriend very well.

"What was your most romantic moment ever together?" Nakuru was asking them, still oohing and ahhing over the ring on Tomoyo's finger.

"Hmm," Eriol said, tapping his chin with a thoughtful expression on his face as Nakuru grew starry-eyed just at the thought of it. "It was a gorgeous sunset, and the two of us stood facing each other on the cliff as the waves crashed below us. The salty spray barely reached us, and the smell of forget-me-nots hung heavily in the air while her hair blew gently towards me. It was the first time we realized that we were madly in love with each other, and I whispered ever so softly into her ear—"

"Yeah right," Tomoyo snorted dryly, cutting in. "That never happened. I think you've been reading too many trashy romance novels, Eriol."

"They are _not _trashy," he protested.

Syaoran slipped something into her pocket when the others weren't looking. She looked up at him questioningly. "Happy birthday," he whispered, smiling, and then produced another present "Open the other one later, all right? They don't know that I got you that extra one." She nodded and accepted the bigger package with slight puzzlement.

"Syaoran wouldn't show me what he bought you," complained Sakura. "It really isn't fair."

"We'll find out soon enough anyway," Tomoyo said, carefully untying the ribbon. "Oh!" she squeaked, touching the silky folds of lilac fabric. It was a traditional Chinese costume, layers upon layers of robes. She admired the delicate designs on them before turning back to him with gratitude in her eyes. "Thanks so much, Xiao Lang. I love it. I only wish that Meiling was here."

"She told me that the two of you have been talking over the phone a lot," he answered, wondering what the two girls chatted about. From what he gathered, she and Meiling spoke almost every night together. "And she said to say happy birthday and hopes that you received her gift."

"Yes, I did," she said, heat creeping up her cheeks. "But that's private."

Eriol raised an eyebrow. "Why?"

"It's, uh, a diary. And I really don't want to show that to any of you, since she sent it to me last night and I've already been writing endlessly in it. So don't tease, Eriol, it's classified information," she said, frowning at him while still turning pink. "And stay out of my head. No mind-reading."

"Never," he promised.

"Good," she said, softening. "So I'm finally sixteen. I feel…"

"Old?" Kero suggested helpfully.

She just laughed and handed him another slice of her birthday cake (along with a napkin to wipe away the last of the crumbs on his face. "Yeah, actually," she said. "Listen, I'm going upstairs to call Meiling. You guys all just stay here a while, okay? I'll make it quick." She ventured a smile at Syaoran as she brushed past him and patted her pocket significantly. "Thank you," she whispered, her voice so soft that he could barely hear it.


	6. Chapter 6

A/N: Okay, so I've been incredibly busy lately... and will continue to be for the rest of the week. But I managed to get enough time to type up this chapter (whoop-dee-doo for me!) and I would like to dedicate it to two people: firstly, serenaXyaten, who pointed out to me that chapter six was a repost. I can't believe I missed that fact. And secondly, to LaCristina, whose predictions are so accurate they're scary, and whom I am incredibly grateful to for taking all that time to submit such a comprehensive review. Thank you so much!

Without further ado, I present to you chapter six.

* * *

Hearts from Aries

* * *

Meiling snapped her cellphone shut with a frown. "Idiots," she mumbled. They ran to her for help for the slightest things—how infuriating. _As though I don't have better things to do,_ she thought, annoyed. She glanced behind her to see Syaoran glowering at… what was her incognito name again... Xiao Long… and winced. He looked upset; she, if anything, looked even worse. That was definitely not what she had planned to happen.

"Come on, you guys," she said quickly. "Let's go sight-seeing. Xiao Long hasn't been around here for a lot of time either and besides, she's been avoiding the media people, so she hasn't done the whole tourist bit yet—being a diva sucks sometimes, although the champagne perks are amazing at parties, or so I hear. You both up for it?"

"Sure," Syaoran said unenthusiastically. Xiao Long sent her a beseeching look from behind the shades, looking unhappy. This was _definitely _not the plan… she forced her brightest smile on her face and spoke in a loud, cheerful voice. "Hurry up, you two, we've got a lot of places to go!"

She wondered whether the part that she had played in Syaoran's story five years ago had indirectly contributed to what had happened. Perhaps she had played a bigger role in the tragedy than she had realized. Swallowing hard, she tugged on his arm and dragged both he and Xiao Long to the car.

Tomoyo's fingers hit the numbers without her even looking.

"Li Meiling speaking."

"Meiling, it's me!"

Miles away in Hong Kong, Meiling sat up on the couch, eyes widening as she switched off the television. "Oh hey, Tomoyo! Happy birthday—I meant to call you tonight. I thought you were having a party today or something. How's it going?"

"Peachy," Tomoyo said as she looked at the new ring on her finger. Then she checked her pockets and found a folded piece of paper and a small parcel wrapped in pink tissue paper, smelling faintly of lemon—a scent that she always associated with Xiao Lang. "I just stepped out of the party a sec to talk to you. Thanks for the gift, Meiling. I keep it in my desk along with the diary you sent me."

"I don't know whether it'll work out," Meiling said as gently as she could. She wished that they didn't have to discuss something like this. Never in her wildest dreams would she have guessed it, until she had finally wormed it out of Tomoyo. "I just hope… I mean, the three of you are all my friends… so if you said something but he didn't feel the same way, or he _did _feel the same way and Sakura…"

"Yeah," Tomoyo said. "But I can't help hoping now. It must seem really stupid to you. I could have done something earlier on, but…" She bit her lip and stopped herself. "Let's not talk about this right now, okay? It _is _my birthday." With a laugh she changed the subject. "Guess what? Eriol got me a ring."

"NO WAY!" Tomoyo winced and pulled it away from her ear as Meiling let out an ear-splitting shriek of disbelief. "Fast operator, isn't he? So when's the wedding? Can I be your maid of honor? That is, if it isn't Sakura. Or is it possible to have two maids of honor?"

"Not like that!" she laughed. "Although everybody thought that at first. It's a birthday present."

"That's one hell of a gift."

Yes, it was. She scrutinized the sparkling stones inlaid on the silver band. It was strange how something so small and delicate could feel so heavy on her finger. It was as though some unspoken promise now anchored her to Eriol.

"But it isn't like you guys are getting married or anything," added Meiling. "So don't let it bother you too much."

She smiled as she untied the parcel. "I wish you were here to join in on the fun, so I wouldn't have to describe all this to you, you know. Why don't you come over to Japan sometime? Japan is nice this time of year." She blinked as she looked down at the gift. It was a small charm to wear around her neck, worked in silver and shaped in an oddly curving symbol. She opened the note. It was written in Chinese; he had been teaching her how to speak and write Mandarin. While she couldn't do either perfectly yet, she was learning fast. In fact, they'd been doing a lot of thing together recently, apart from watching kung fu movies and going to training. She smiled.

_Dear Tomoyo,_

_Happy birthday. This is a special charm for you to wear. It's supposed to protect you and bring good luck—and besides that, it has a small measure of magic in it. It could come in handy if you're ever in trouble. Don't tell Eriol or Sakura that you have it, okay? Sakura doesn't really know how to keep a secret all that well (although I hate to say it) and I think that Hiragizawa would call me a hypocrite because I'm always lecturing him about using his magic for 'frivolous means'. Besides, you ARE his girlfriend._

_On that topic, this may not be the time to mention it, but I'm getting more and more worried about you. That talk that we had about Hiragizawa _(here the paper nearly had a hole through the writing, as though Syaoran had pressed very hard on the pen while writing the name) _and about… well, love. I wonder whether this is what is best for you even if you insist that you can handle it. It's not a question of whether you can handle it or not, because I know all too well that you can take pretty much anything. But don't you get it, Tomoyo? That's not the issue! The issue here is that there's more out there for you._

_A person would have to be an idiot not to see what a great person you are—you're smart, pretty, blah, blah, and all that stuff that I would rather not say right now because it's going to give me a headache. You deserve to be happy._

_Sorry I suck at writing letters. Okay, I don't. Not really. But I _do _suck at writing nice ones. Happy birthday._

_Always,_

_Xiao Lang_

Her eyes filled with tears as she folded the letter again. "Tomoyo? What's wrong?" Meiling asked, concerned, as silence filled the other end of the line. "Are you okay over there?"

"Xiao Lang's gift…" she murmured. "It's wonderful." She clasped it around her neck and tucked the paper in her pocket. "I'm never taking this off. They'll have to pry it from my cold, dead corpse." She let out a sigh. "I feel so sorry for him sometimes. He has this whole hero complex thing, about wanting to protect everyone. But if he didn't have that, he wouldn't be Xiao Lang."

"If you love him, why don't you just tell him?"

Meiling looked back at Syaoran and Xiao Long in the backseat, both of them silently staring out the window. She had said those words to Tomoyo; perhaps then it was her fault that everything happened the way it did. Life was supposed to be simple for all of them. It… it shouldn't have turned out this way.

* * *

Hearts from Aries

"She's taking a long time," Yukito commented to Eriol. "Think we should check up on her? She's missing her own party."

"Girl talk," Nakuru said wisely.

Syaoran glanced upstairs, wondering whether he'd made a mistake in giving her that note. It would be humiliating if she went to him and told him that she really _did _love Hiragizawa. Somehow he felt that it wasn't true—it couldn't be—but then again, he wasn't very good at reading girls.

"What's the matter, Syaoran?" Sakura asked.

"You look like you just swallowed a goldfish," Nakuru added. Spinel Sun had gone off somewhere to read—parties were apparently not his thing—and so she was bored, and ready for someone to pick on. And he was a very handy target at the moment.

"Ah… just thinking," he said truthfully.

"Tomoyo said that you're not allowed to think while you're here," Eriol said, grinning, as light flashed off his glasses. "You have to be punished for breaking my lovely girlfriend's rules—and on her own birthday too. Shame on you. I ought to teach you a lesson and poke into your mind, my cute little descendant."

Syaoran turned red. "It's really none of your business, Hiragizawa," he snapped. Ever since Sakura had become his girlfriend he'd started putting a magical barrier up in his mind to shield his thoughts from Eriol anyway. And ever since the day that Hiragizawa had first probed his mind and found the block, he didn't try to break it, even though Syaoran knew that he could have done it all too easily; he had simply let Syaoran be, and he had to admit that Eriol had at least been decent enough to respect his wishes even if he was an annoyingly smug ass.

Who was he kidding? Even with his constant complaints about the way Eriol was, Eriol was essentially a great guy. Years of psychoanalyzing himself after Eriol's first appearance, he realized that the reason why he had been so annoyed at the guy was for two reasons: one, because he was uneasy about Eriol's power, and two, because Eriol was just… perfect.

Come on; Eriol beat him at just about everything. There had been a point when he had tortured himself wondering whether Sakura would prefer Clow Reed's reincarnation to him, with all those suave, insanely smooth techniques that he used on her. He winced at the memory and forced himself not to think about it.

It had taken him a lot of effort to be mature enough to acknowledge that he had been jealous. Sometimes he felt like he just wanted to be a normal kid and just hate Eriol, but his mind wouldn't let him rest until he admitted the truth. Eriol was wonderful, and he didn't like him because of that.

But clearly, whether he was perfect or not, Tomoyo simply didn't love him. Or maybe again he was mistaken and—

_Stop thinking so much, _he ordered himself, as Tomoyo came downstairs, smiling. She smiled dutifully first at Eriol, like any loving girlfriend would. Syaoran's stomach turned; perhaps he had made a big mistake. Maybe she really _was _in love. But when she turned away from Eriol, he saw a flash of something in her eyes and knew that he hadn't been wrong at all. She went to him.

"Meiling says you should call her later, Xiao Lang," she said, her glance ticking to Sakura, who was at Syaoran's side, and then their gazes locked for a nanosecond—the two of them were good at communicating nonverbally now, and he immediately understood that she had something to say to him in private even as Tomoyo continued chatting about inconsequential things. "She's thinking about visiting Japan some time soon, so try and help me persuade her, okay?"

"Okay," he agreed. Then he feigned glancing over at Touya. "Is that your baby album, Sakura?" Thankfully Touya had chosen this moment to snicker over it with Yukito (who looked embarrassed for Sakura and was reprimanding Touya), Kero (who was stuffing himself with sweets while exclaiming over the snapshots), Nakuru (who had gotten bored with him and was now saying how much cuter Sakura was then Touya, much to Touya's disgust) and Eriol (who was chuckling inwardly, immensely amused). His girlfriend's cheeks turned a bright, blotchy red and she rushed over to try and seize it from Touya. He turned back to Tomoyo. "You can tell me what you wanted to say now."

When had they gotten to know each other this way? To know what the other was thinking, when they were going to talk about things that they didn't want the others to know…

Hang on. They _didn't _have things that they didn't want the others to know, did they?

Apparently they did. "Thank you, Xiao Lang," she said softly, touching her hand to the spot where she had placed the charm under the collar of her dress, hiding it from sight even as she appreciated the feel of the cool metal against her skin. "I don't deserve such a gift."

"Yes, you do," he said. "And I only wish that I knew what else to do." He looked back at Sakura, and then at Tomoyo. "I…"

"You've done more than enough," she replied. "Please."

It was odd how her voice changed when she was around him. With Sakura, it was bright and bubbly. In the choir, it was a high, pure soprano. To Eriol, it could be affectionate and even flirty. To everyone, it was elegant and musical.

With Syaoran alone, it trembled. In a way that no one else had ever heard.

And sometimes it scared him, even though he wasn't sure why.

"So how does it feel to be sixteen?" he asked her, not wanting to continue this train of thought. It probably would have turned out to be something of the 'you're-too-kind' spiel variety, which was merely formality and courtesy.

"Honestly?"

"Yeah."

She ran a hand through her hair, deliberating no her answer. "The future scares me. I feel more insecure about sixteen than I was of my childhood. I feel like my choices matter a lot more now. And that… that everything's uncertain." She sighed. "I had more faith in everything when I was younger. Everything was safe back then. And if it wasn't, at least I knew what would happen."

"Oh, Tomoyo. That's what we're here for. If you ever need help…"

"If I ever need help?" She smiled, inhaling his signature aura of lemon zest. Yes, she really did love him. She just wished that she hadn't damned herself doing it. "I know exactly where to get it. But Xiao Lang, don't forget that you need help sometimes too." She raised her violet eyes to him. "And that I'm here to give it when you need it."

Her tone changed swiftly as Eriol started walking towards them, a glass of Tomoyo's favorite strawberry milkshake in his hand. She looked tired all of the sudden as she changed the subject, but she made it sound as though they'd been discussing it all along. "So, don't forget our practice session at the dojo later, right, Xiao Lang? I'm still awful at those high kicks."

"Of course."

Hearts from Aries

* * *

He _had _called his cousin that night. Not because he had some agenda in mind, but because he wanted to. And because Tomoyo had asked him to.

Not that he really got why that had so much bearing to him.

"Meiling?"

"_Finally_, you call me. You realize that the last time you called was before White Day?" He could almost picture his impulsive cousin with her hands on her hips, yelling at him. "You are such an ungrateful twit! At least Tomoyo told me about it." Her tone softened. "You did a good thing, giving her that painting. She's already e-mailed me pictures of it, and it's beautiful. I didn't know that you were so good at art."

He winced. "I'm not."

"Auntie Yelan wants to know how you're doing, you know. The letters that you send home aren't exactly the most informative." Syaoran still had to write at least once a week to tell them that yes, he was still alive, and no, he hadn't used up all the money they were transferring to his bank account each month.

"I'm fine."

Meiling's tone changed. "You know that Tomoyo called me earlier during her party, right?"

"Yeah, of course."

"She said something about a charm. Now, I don't know whether my hunch is correct, but…"

Sometimes Meiling really was too smart for her own good. He knew that she could read him like a book and that there was no point hiding the truth from her. And he knew that her guess was correct. "It is what you think it is."

Meiling gasped. "Auntie will throw a fit. She'll kill you. No, wait. The Elders will probably kill you. And then mother will kill you. And then the rest of the Li clan. And you'll be like some extra-concentrated ghost. Can you die more than once?"

"I'll make her understand somehow," Syaoran said stubbornly. "And mother doesn't have to know right now."

"You imbecile! You really gave away the Li clan charm?"

Syaoran winced at her low reprimand. He knew that she didn't dare roar at him the way she wanted to, for fear of someone overhearing her. "Yes, I did," he said. "I gave it to Tomoyo."

Meiling was conflicted. On the one hand, she was overjoyed for Tomoyo. On the other hand, her Li clan training and education were kicking in. "The Li clan charm contains a portion of the magical and physical signatures of every Li clan member, even the dead ones. It's the single most powerful magical object out there. It has the power to rival even Clow, since Clow Reed himself put in part of his aura there. How could you just give it to Tomoyo?"

"I can protect myself. She can't!" he protested. "And you don't need to give me that lecture. It isn't as if I don't know what the charm is. You don't understand, Meiling. It was better, for it to go to her, instead of gathering dust in my treasure chest. I would rather see it around her neck and keeping her safe."

"Syaoran… are you sure you really are in love with Sakura?"

He flinched. "What the hell does that have to do with this?"

"Everything."

"You've got it all wrong. Look, just don't tell mother or anyone else, okay? They won't know unless you tell them. Please? And Tomoyo doesn't know what it is either, so don't tell her."

Meiling gave an odd little laugh. "You're wrong. I don't have to tell her. I'm sure that deep down, Tomoyo was the first to realize what it means." And with that, she hung up.

* * *

Hearts from Aries

In those days, during the weekends, they would come to the dojo an hour before everyone else so that they could practice more. They enjoyed the solitude offered to them—sixty minutes worth—just talking to each other and practicing. It was easier when they weren't trying to avoid being overheard by the others; Syaoran especially hated it when the girls became incredibly obvious in their attempts to eavesdrop—and that happened all too often.

They had enough trouble avoiding talking about certain subjects in front of their classmates anyway.

"Hey, Xiao Lang," Tomoyo said, entering and dropping her gym bag near the door. She was already dressed in her white _gi, _as he was—a complete change from the rich fabric of her birthday dress earlier. "You're earlier than I expected."

"Nothing else to do," he said.

She smiled and shrugged, and they started to warm up. "I thought that you were checking out college options with Kasukabe-san," she commented, referring to their homeroom adviser. "Or something to that extent, anyway."

He made a face. "You mean because she's been flinging those brochures at me? No—to be honest, I'm not really looking forward to college." He sighed and started to go through the usual tai chi exercises. "It just seems… well, I don't know. Pointless. I already know what I'm going to be, right? I'm going to be the head of the Li clan, blah, blah, uphold the family duty. Whatever. It isn't like I don't already know about the business courses that I'm going to take. I've done a lot more than that."

As he corrected her form, she brushed her hair back from her eyes. "Honestly, I think you're lucky." She avoided his eyes as she started following his movements, even as he turned to look at her. "My mom wants me to take business too. I'm thinking about music classes…" she trailed off, looking embarrassed. "She says that there's no money in it, but the truth is that I just want to sing. I guess it's selfish of me, considering that she's practically spent her entire life building up Daidouji Corp for me. I know my mother wants me to be happy, but sometimes it feels like she's forgotten that I ought to have a say in what makes me happy."

He'd never taken it for granted that she would want something other than to be the head of Daidouji Corp. He wondered what it was like for her; all his life, he'd only wanted to assume his place as the rightful leader of the Li clan. He'd known what was expected of him, and he had aligned his desires to obey the elders of his clan. "I'm not the best person to talk to about this," he said, hesitating as he chose his words carefully. "I understand that you have dreams, but…"

"But I shouldn't act on them, because of a sense of duty?"

"Well… yeah."

"You're probably right. Let's… let's not talk about it," she said abruptly, dropping into a fighting stance. "Spar me?"

"I'm sorry," he said, not moving.

"What for?"

He knew that she was trying to cover up whatever emotions their little exchange had sparked, and he hated it. She was good at it with Sakura and Eriol, covering up and letting them believe what they wanted to; but he had hoped that at least with him… _stupid, _he reprimanded himself. As though he really had the right to know her any better than her best friend and boyfriend. Utterly stupid. "Let's talk."

She winced. He obviously felt guilty for brushing her aside like that; and much as she felt hurt, she didn't want to force it on someone who didn't want to listen. And what was she doing anyway? He wasn't interested in her story. He only cared about… she looked down at her bare feet, frowning at her cotton candy pink toenails.

Maybe it was time to change that polish. She was tired of being the predictable cotton candy pink girl. "Xiao Lang—"

"No, seriously. It's not just about you. I didn't really mean what I said." He took a deep breath. If he honestly wanted to know her better than Eriol and Sakura, she would have to know him better too. And the truth was that sometimes he felt that he didn't know himself either. "I guess I'm pretty undecided about what I want myself." He saw the doubt in her eyes and winced. "I wonder sometimes—do I really want to be the leader, or was I just brought up to believe it? It's kind of… scary, I guess. And definitely confusing."

She melted. "Thank God. I just feel like I can't talk about this with… with anyone else I know." They sat down in the middle of the dojo, ignoring the feeling of being surrounded by all that open space. "I mean, Sakura's dad will support her no matter what she chooses. And as for Eriol… well… he doesn't exactly have that problem, does he?"

He laughed a little. "Yeah, now that I think about it. And everyone else… well, it just seems…"

"Set in stone for them," she finished. "Or so distant that they barely seem real to us. I mean, take Yamazaki; he's going to take up Communications and become a comedian, but everyone knows that he and Chiharu will be getting engaged soon. Naoko wants to take up Literature and write, but she's already been given an offer from some publishing companies for some stories that she's already written. Rika… well, they said that Rika and Terada-sensei are going to be married once she graduates, and then she's going to take up Nursing. They're all… so happy. They just don't have the same obligations. Even Touya and Yukito; even if they're in college, they pursued their own dreams. Not really hard, considering that they basically can do whatever they want. They don't have anything to stop them."

"I hear you," he agreed. "I wonder if anyone else is going through the same things. They say that this sort of trouble is really common, but if that's the case… where's everyone else out there experiencing the same thing? Everyone else is just looking forward to graduating and having fun with whatever course they choose." He shook his head. "They just don't have a clue. They don't have to deal with the same problems. They don't have any duties to their families, or at least none that come into this magnitude."

She hugged her knees to her chest. "I'm glad that I'm not alone in this," she said. "I always…" She trailed off again, now looking faintly embarrassed. "I'm sorry."

"Don't apologize for yourself," he insisted. "There's nothing wrong with wanting to sing, Tomoyo. And from what I've heard of your singing… I understand why." He smiled at her. "You have a gift. It would be a shame to let it languish in the office."

"It's just… my mother," she explained, as though that made perfect sense. And in a way, it sort of did. "I barely even see her anymore. Even when she comes back home, she's always shut up in her office. She always says that we're going to go somewhere and it never happens. When I tried talking to her about it, she reminded me that she was just doing it for my future. I feel like I've done something _wrong. _And that's why she always stays away. And I just want to do whatever I can… to get her approval."

It was impulsive of him—and strange, for someone as undemonstrative as Syaoran when it came to feelings—but he felt overwhelmed for her and reached out and hugged her. She sat there, surprised, with his arms wrapped tightly around her. "You didn't do anything wrong. Your mom loves you, in her own way. I'm not saying that her way is the right way, but she does; I think she just doesn't know what she's doing. And that doesn't mean that you should give up your dreams for that."

She didn't make a sound, just sat there shaking and let the tears fall until his _gi _was completely soaked; and then finally, when she couldn't stand it anymore she let out hard, broken sobs that racked her body.

_It's okay, _he whispered to himself, letting the sound wash over him in waves, unaware that he was stroking her hair as she rocked in his arms, crying. When they were little, Tomoyo didn't cry. Not ever. Sakura had once sworn that Tomoyo just didn't know how to. Of course she'd been proved wrong that day when Tomoyo was with Eriol on the landing. His arms tightened around her. _Don't bottle it up anymore. We all know that you've been hiding it. _We—he didn't even have the courage to say that _he _knew that she'd been hiding something.

"Xiao Lang…" she said finally, wiping at her eyes. She hated herself for getting so weepy in front of him, patches of color flooding her cheeks in embarrassment. She hadn't meant for it to get out of hand like this. She'd been crying a lot since the first time Eriol had gotten her to break down. And now he probably thought that she was an overemotional drama queen—worse, he probably only cared because he felt sorry for her. Or because she was Sakura's supposed best friend. She could find no words to say to him except the ones that she had used so often, like a knee-jerk reaction, whenever she had nothing else to say: "I'm sorry."

He wondered if she was angry. From the way she acted, she seemed embarrassed more than anything else. His throat was dry as he tried to answer her, wanting to tell her everything that had been on his mind ever since that day that she had come in acting so strangely and Eriol had changed everything among the four of them. Instead, only two words unstuck themselves. "It's okay."

And she wanted to believe that it was.

* * *

Hearts from Aries

"Meiling?"

She snapped out of her reverie to find Syaoran and Xiao Long looking at her with frank concern. "Oh, sorry. I just spaced out for a moment there."

_Guess I'm not the only one affected, _Syaoran thought, half-bitter and half-guilty. He knew that his appearance dredged up memories that she had been trying to suppress with probably the same amount of success that he had: in other words, zero. It was _Meiling _who had turned out to be Tomoyo's confidant at the time, although neither girl had breathed a word to him. And to think that Meiling was his cousin…

It was that evening, after her practice with Syaoran. After they had talked for what seemed like forever, they had finally both gone home. And the first thing that Tomoyo had done was call Meiling again. "I don't know, Meiling," Tomoyo said, frowning as she caught sight of herself in the mirror. Scrubbed free of makeup, her face looked pathetically young. She wondered whether Syaoran knew the difference between her face at the dojo and the one outside of it. "This is getting too messy."

"But I think that he's made it clear enough that he has _some _feelings for you," Meiling returned, exasperated. She couldn't help feeling a little jealous of Tomoyo; all those years, as his childhood friend, as his cousin, as his _fiancée _for crying out loud, and he never even hugged her. And Tomoyo had turned that all around, even though she wasn't his girlfriend. Correction: even though he already _had _a girlfriend. "I know that this looks messy and I know that you really don't want to get between him and Sakura, but don't you think that that's a choice that he should be allowed to make by himself?" She bit her lip. "I know it's hard."

"But Sakura barely even _talks _to me anymore about anything else. It's always Syaoran this and Syaoran that, it's never just the normal stuff. I didn't even have the heart to tell her long ago that I liked him because we were so caught up with the Sakura cards." She sighed. "I even _encouraged _him to go after her, which is so stupid I wish I could just kill myself now and get it over with."

Meiling sighed. "It's just that you're so… you're so _passive, _Tomoyo. Everyone runs to you when they have problems, but you always put aside your own. I wouldn't have guessed if you hadn't told me yourself."

Tomoyo opened her dresser drawer with a key tied around her neck and looked at Meiling's present to her: a framed picture of Syaoran, which Meiling had teased her mercilessly about over the phone. She admired it for a moment before hastily locking it again. "I don't even know what I'm _doing _anymore. Like the whole Eriol thing. I mean, he's sweet and everything but… there's just this something that I don't really understand." She wondered why Eriol himself didn't seem to realize it; or if he did, he gave no hint of it to her. How could it be possible that Clow Reed didn't see through her and know that she wasn't in love with him? She supposed that even a powerful magician had to make mistakes sometimes.

She supposed that in the long run, she'd only made a mistake when it came to Eriol. And she had a feeling that she would regret it forever. But right now, she just didn't have the heart to break up with him and tell him that the main reason why she had agreed in the first place was that she saw Sakura and Syaoran and she had desperately wished for her own happy ending. Maybe she had even thought, as she had told Syaoran, that she'd school herself to fall in love. It was a little too late when she found out that things didn't really work out that way.

"I thought that he and Sakura were destined for each other," Meiling said after a moment. She had to be as honest as possible with Tomoyo—she just had to warn the other girl, as she had done repeatedly before. Tomoyo had tried listening, but she told Meiling flat-out every time that it just didn't work. But still—there was no harm in trying again. "Maybe they are."

Yes, maybe they were. But Tomoyo…

"I can't help it, Meiling," she said. "I know what you're trying to tell me, but my brain just isn't listening. I'm sorry. If I could have, I would have put a stop to it a long time ago. But I can't. And maybe it's selfish of me to do this, but I don't know what else I can do." She ran a hand through her hair. She had liked Syaoran long before he'd even realized that he had feelings for Sakura. When she picked up on his feelings (not that it was hard to, the way he blushed around her best friend) she was crushed. And then she told him to go tell Sakura, letting the two of them live happily ever after not caring about what happened to her—practically with her _blessing_.

Sometimes she wondered what was wrong with Sakura. How come the other girl never even wondered why she was always around Syaoran when they went out? Didn't Sakura ever stop to think sometimes?

And sometimes she wondered whether she was mad or just a masochist—she couldn't blame Sakura, not when she had pretended that she didn't feel anything for him and was even the one who set them up. She just smiled at them and cursed herself. Especially when she lost both Syaoran _and _Sakura when they got together, now that her best friend was spending all her time with her boyfriend. And after Meiling had moved away, Chiharu had paired up with Yamazaki, Rika started dating Terada-sensei (as soon as she had gotten a little bit older and made sure that they were discreet), and Naoko was caught up in her own little world of books, blissfully alternating between Rika and Chiharu. Where did that leave her? "We're friends now, and I think that he cares for me in a big-brother sort of way."

"I really think that I should come over there," Meiling said, shaking her head even though Tomoyo couldn't see her. "I think you're just really lonely right now, Tomoyo. When's the last time you and Sakura went out together as BFFs anyway?"

"She can't help it. She's always out with Xiao Lang."

Then the heaviness of the statement hit her full in the chest. "Damn it. I'm just deluding myself." With a groan, she let her head rest on her dresser with a solid _thump _and let it stay there. "I don't know anymore. I don't know about anything. All I'm sure of is that I really do care for him, even if he doesn't for me."

_I care so badly I think that my head's going to burst. I wonder if Tomoyo's okay. _Syaoran gave himself a little shake to wake up from his trance and smile at Sakura, who was sitting beside him in the dimness of the movie theater not too far from the Daidouji residence. She beamed back at him, but he still felt an odd sense of disquiet.

He wondered whether he'd offended Tomoyo earlier. It was just that he felt that she was probably the saddest person he'd ever come across—and that was including himself, his mother, and his dead, overworked father. She was even more tragic than those old sadist goats also known as the Elders of the Li clan. He tapped his chin thoughtfully as he kept his eyes trained on the screen.

She had changed; why hadn't any of them seen it? He doubted whether Sakura had even noticed anything. And then he felt guilty, because he knew that he was the one who took up most of her time.

"You okay, Syaoran?" Sakura whispered, snuggling a little closer to him. Her hair tickled his chin, the smell of peaches and apples and cherry blossoms hanging between them. "You seem kind of distracted tonight." Actually, he'd been acting like this for a while now. It was starting to make her worry.

He wondered whether he should mention anything to her. If Sakura knew, surely she would do something…?

"It's nothing," he whispered back, wondering why he couldn't bring himself to tell her. He supposed it was because he didn't want her to feel bad about not realizing anything about what was going on with her own best friend. And besides, it would have felt like betrayal, telling Sakura what had seemed like the deepest of secrets to him.

Tomoyo probably had a good reason for not telling Sakura what was going on. If he read Tomoyo right, he was sure that she was trying to spare her from knowing. That was just the way she was.

The problem with Tomoyo was that she was so… submissive. She took whatever life doled out to her without saying anything in complaint. And he'd thought that she didn't mind; worse, that she was actually _happy_ about it—now _that _would have been hilarious if wasn't so pitiful.

"Syaoran—"

Sighing, he turned his attention back to Sakura and to the film and forced a smile at his girlfriend, who was frowning at him. "I told you—it's really nothing."

* * *

Hearts from Aries

Syaoran didn't want to see anybody. He had locked everyone out of his apartment, saying that he didn't want to talk, didn't want to think about what was happening. Even Sakura had respected his wishes, leaving him alone. But Tomoyo stood outside, ringing the doorbell, evidently having skipped school to visit him.

"Xiao Lang!" she called, her beautiful voice shaky as she alternated between ringing the doorbell and pounding on the door, ignoring the mutters of Syaoran's neighbors. "Please, please open the door. Meiling told me what happened. I don't understand…"

"No," he said, his voice slightly muffled. "It's nothing, Tomoyo. I'm fine. I'll get over it eventually."

"Xiao Lang… you've helped me so much. Can't you let me in? What will it take?" she pleaded. "I'm going to stay out here the whole night if I have to. I don't want you to be left alone like this."

"We all knew that Fanren was going to die," he muttered through the door, just loud enough for her to hear through the thick wood. "Mother had already seen it in her future. I just…" He struggled to put himself into words. "I didn't get the chance to say goodbye to her. I didn't even say that I was sorry."

"I can't pretend to know what you're feeling right now," she replied. "But I do know that I want to see you, and I want to listen to what you've got to say."

He opened the door. "I'm the one who caused Fanren's illness," he whispered.

Tomoyo's brow furrowed. "They said that she died of a mysterious sickness all of the sudden," she said carefully. "Her doctors couldn't determine what it was. They suspected poison at first, but they vetoed it in the end."

"I wasn't supposed to be born when I was younger. My mother and father needed a son; they offered to sacrifice another one of their daughters eventually if they were granted it. And the gods chose Fanren, to be taken when her power reached its peak." His throat constricted. "They claimed her only today, so her magic must have finally developed to its full potential. She lived her life knowing that she was a sacrifice for me, but I never got the chance to thank her for it."

_Dear gods, he's been carrying this on his shoulders for so long. _She drew him to her, embracing him protectively. "Xiao Lang…"

"How could my mother and father have done that?" he murmured. "She was their own flesh and blood. For the sake of having a male heir, they gave her up to the gods. I should never have been born."

_What can I say to make him feel better? _It was all so difficult to know. "Then don't let Fanren's death go in vain. Be the best that you can be, Xiao Lang, and she'll have no regrets." She felt the need to protect him from the harshness of the reality that he was experiencing right now. "We can't do anything about what happened, but we can change so that we can try to make the most out of it. Who was to say that she wouldn't have died even without the bargain your parents struck?"

"But I know that she wanted to live," he said softly. "Everyone does."

She directed her gaze at him. "If it was to save a person that I loved with all my heart, I would have no qualms about dying. Your sister died nobly. I can't pretend that I approve of what your parents did, but I understand why. And selfish as it may seem, I'm glad that you're alive now. I'm sure that if Fanren could speak to you now, she would tell you the same thing. If she really hated you, she wouldn't have been such a good sister to you—she never treated you any differently. And hard as it may be, you have to accept her death."

"I…" he let himself stop thinking, surrendering himself to the gentle arms encircling him as he wept for the first time in a long, long while.

_Thank God. _She held him tight. "I'm here, Xiao Lang. Please don't try to stop your tears."

* * *

Hearts from Aries

"Syaoran!" Sakura said, delighted, when he came to school the next day. There was a look of peace on his face; he had finally come to terms with the enormity of the situation, but at the same time, he accepted it. "Are you feeling better now?"

He ventured a smile. "Yes." He sighed. "They told me not to come back for the funeral… they said they didn't want to disrupt my studies." He clenched his fist. "I'm going anyway. Fanren would have understood that I wanted to see her one last time." The funeral was the next day, and he would be flying to Hong Kong that very afternoon.

"You're going alone?" Sakura asked.

With a nod, he added, "I doubt that your brother would take it well if you tried going, Sakura."

She smiled sheepishly. "True… but I wondered whether you needed someone for you there."

In truth, he was dreading the funeral. He would have to look on Fanren's cold, dead face. It was easier for him to bear without actually having to look on her, but he reasoned that he had to be strong. "I'll be okay on my own," he assured her. "I'll probably fly right back afterwards anyway."

Tomoyo observed him carefully, her amethyst eyes picking up the slight trembling in his fingers, the quiet tremor in his voice. She dropped her gaze and started scribbling something in her notebook.

When Syaoran appeared on his mother's doorstep in Hong Kong, the first thing he heard was Meiling screaming, "You bloody idiot, we told you not to come!" before she hit him on the head with a satisfyingly loud thud. She looked extremely upset for some reason. "I didn't think that you were fool enough to disobey—"

"Meiling," he interrupted her. "Fanren is my sister." He glared at her. "I am the cause of her untimely death. The least I can do is being here at the very end." He frowned. "Why didn't you call me when she suddenly fell ill? At least then I would have been able to say goodbye."

His mother dropped her gaze. "Xiao Lang, I felt that under the circumstances—"

Something wasn't right. "Show me," he said slowly.

"No," his sister Xiefa said, moving to stand before him, as though to shield something from him. It was a pathetic gesture; he could have batted her away without even blinking.

Meiling looked from his determined amber eyes to Yelan, silently trying to communicate that Syaoran had the right to know—Syaoran was strong; he could bear it. Yelan merely pursed her lips. Then she sighed heavily. "Xiao Lang… there's something we didn't exactly tell you."

Syaoran's eyes leveled with her. "Show me."

The dark-haired girl gestured for Yelan and Syaoran's sisters to move away. It was in times like this that she was really in her element; she was an expert at assessing bad situations and taking charge. She took Syaoran by the hands, and then showed him the coffin and the young girl inside it.

"What happened to her?" Syaoran asked in horror, taking in the black markings snaking on Fanren's fair skin, like nightshade blood.

"It was because of the sacrifice," she said softly. "I'm so sorry, Xiao Lang. we wanted to spare you from this. We didn't call you because she became incoherent towards the end, raving and… and throwing up blood…"

He clenched his fists. "I see." He felt a pounding in his head. "The funeral is tomorrow. I will be there."

* * *

A/N: This chapter is longer than I planned it to be... but all the better, in my opinion. I cut it at a cliffhanger... sorry! Like I said, I'll be swamped with work for the rest of the week (just when I finished one exam, I get launched headfirst into more!) but more reviews equals faster updates, so please keep reviewing! Also, detailed reviews like LaCristina's will definitely motivate me to update soon. 


	7. Chapter 7

A/N: This took me forever to update, I know, and I'm sorry. But it's all because of my hectic schedule and yes, one of my other fics. Anyway, I'm posting this chapter because I promised Brad Trinity 666 that I would, regardless of the number of reviews I get. I don't resent it; I suppose the pairing isn't all that interesting or fits well, although I'm immensely grateful to all the people who reviewed. Anyway, I wanted to explain what happens at Fanren's funeral. So without further ado, I present to you chapter seven.

* * *

Why had they insisted on an open-casket funeral? Okay, so it was customary in the Li clan—no matter how bloody and broken one's body might have been, the only exception would be if there was no body left (and with the Li clan's bloody history, that was actually a pretty common occurrence). It was supposed to make the children in the clan accustomed to the sight of blood.

But this was not blood; Syaoran's skin crawled when he looked at the markings on Fanren's body. It was his fault. It was a sign from the gods, a symbol of what he was. He felt the eyes of the Elders on him, and he suppressed a shudder. The rest of the clan was whispering, curious and accusing.

"Cold-blooded parents, for the sake of a son—"

"Has he no shame, coming here like this?"

"He is, after all, extremely talented, and is supposed to be our next leader—"

"No sense of propriety! His presence here is entirely in bad taste—"

"… He should never have been born to begin with."

He tried to block out the whirlwind of murmurs around him, but they pounded at him incessantly, like a raging torrent unleashing itself on him. Finally he let go, let them flood into his ears as he closed his eyes; he deserved this much punishment at least, for being alive.

He felt a warm hand on his shoulder. "Xiao Lang?"

His eyes snapped open. "Tomoyo?" he breathed, turning around. Sure enough, it was her, dressed appropriately in black, her amethyst eyes as unfathomable as ever. But he caught a flicker of anger when her gaze ticked over to the bystanders, as though she too had heard their comments—and hadn't liked them one bit.

"I didn't want you to be alone," she said softly. "Meiling told me what happened." And she was fuming. Good thing she had come, if his own family treated him this way. Didn't they realize that he had never asked for that to happen? She couldn't pretend that she didn't get why Li Yelan and Syaoran's father might have done so; after all, had her father been able to choose, he would probably have picked a son.

Then again, Daidouji Sonomi preferred to have a strong daughter—preferably one that, oh, happened to look like Nadeshiko? One that would obey her and stay by her side in the way that Nadeshiko never did?

She frowned. Now was not the time to pity herself. Just one look into Syaoran's eyes and all thoughts of her personal burdens vanished.

"I'm glad," he managed to choke out. "I'm glad…"

She shushed him. "I'm sorry I couldn't get here any earlier." She put a comforting hand on his arm. "I…"

His eyes were dark with grief. "They said that she suffered a great deal towards the end," he said, tormented.

"We all suffer," she replied evenly. "You're suffering right now." Her musical voice, though quiet, could be heard by the rest of the eavesdropping Li clan. "Although _some people _don't seem to realize that."

At that, Syaoran couldn't suppress a soft chuckle when the Li clan members turned bright red, including the Elders. Leave it to Tomoyo to make them feel ashamed! But at the same time, he could see that she had antagonized some of them, despite the fact that her comment had been uttered in such a simple tone, without accusing anyone directly. "Hey, you'd better watch what you say," he said, pulling her away from the rest of them. "They're all skilled fighters and sorcerers, you know." He blinked. "Where are your bodyguards?"

She raised her eyebrows. "I didn't bring them. This is a personal matter, and I don't see any reason why I should bring them along to intrude on a friend's grief."

"That was… that's ridiculous," he said, sputtering in the face of her cool reply. "You're the Daidouji heiress! There are plenty of people out there who would be glad to kidnap you or worse. You need protection!"

"Right now it isn't I who needs protection, Xiao Lang. It's you." She took his hand in hers. "You have to say goodbye. Never mind what the others say. Just go up to her and say it."

He blinked, his mouth going dry. "I don't think I can…"

"Xiao Lang," she said, looking straight into his eyes. "You can."

He released her hand slowly just as Meiling came over to take his place beside Tomoyo. Time seemed to be moving at a snail's pace. It was as though he was moving in slow motion. He could feel the eyes of the Li clan on him—could feel them like daggers burying themselves in his spine—but he was aware of a knot of warmth in his stomach as a thought rushed through his head.

While it was true that there were so many eyes trying to see through him, trying to tell him that he wasn't worthy to have been born in the first place, they were dispelled by another presence.

There was a pair of beautiful violet eyes back there, and they were telling him to live.

"Fanren," he whispered, stopping before his sister's coffin. "I hope that you died without any regrets. I am so sorry for putting you through all this. You have never treated me any differently; you always protected me and showed your love for me, even though I am the cause of your short life. But you are now with the gods—and I hope that they keep you well." He took one marked hand and pressed his lips to the symbols on her palm, ignoring the gasps of those around him.

No one else had dared to touch Fanren so far, in case the marks would have some adverse effect on them. But when he kissed her hand lightly, the markings vanished, and a look of utter peace settled on Fanren's face.

Forgiveness, perhaps? He wanted to think so. Perhaps the gods had meant for him to know that Fanren didn't hold any grudge against him. He sent a quick prayer of thanks to them and asked them to take care of Fanren.

"May you be the brightest star in the heavens," he murmured before withdrawing back to Tomoyo's side.

* * *

Hearts from Aries

"Daidouji Tomoyo?" Yelan questioned. At Tomoyo's sweet smile and nod, she turned to Syaoran and added in Chinese, "I approve." His sisters also nodded their assent, grinning mischievously at him.

Syaoran began to choke. "Mother—she can understand Chinese."

Yelan smiled. "Even better, then."

"Have you been teaching her, Xiao Lang?" Fuutie asked.

"Ah… yeah." The sisters smirked. They knew that they were supposed to act solemn at Fanren's funeral, but she had accepted it; they had accepted it as well. They were already used to death, and they had known that it had been coming for a long time.

Besides, they felt that if Fanren had been here, she would have loved teasing Syaoran too.

Tomoyo blushed. "I am so sorry to come here all of the sudden," she said, bowing slightly as she spoke before she straightened, showing off her perfect posture. "I simply thought that Xiao Lang wouldn't want to be alone during a time like this."

"But he is not alone, after all," Yelan said shrewdly. "His family is here."

Tomoyo kept her head held high. "I am afraid that while he does indeed have his family here, not all of them look very kindly on him. Forgive me for saying so; I'm sure that you love Xiao Lang very much. But not all of his relatives seem to think that it was proper for him to be at his own sister's funeral. Why that would be, I do not understand. She was his sister, after all."

Yelan smiled. "Yes, you're right. By the way, where is the Card Mistress?"

"She's still in Japan," Tomoyo explained. "I didn't inform her that I was coming here. I suppose I should have, but I was in a hurry."

"Uh… what about Hiragizawa?" Syaoran asked.

"I told him," she said matter-of-factly, as though she had nothing to hide. "He understood. He actually wanted to come along at first, but I pointed out to him that the two of you…"

"Ah." Syaoran nodded, letting the sentence hang unfinished in the air. "That would explain it."

"Daidouji, of the Daidouji Corporation, if I remember correctly?" Yelan asked thoughtfully. Tomoyo nodded. "We do quite a lot of business with your family. It's a fine company; always delivers on their promises." She smiled. The last time that she had seen Tomoyo, the girl had been entirely eclipsed by the appearance of the Card Mistress and Yelan hadn't taken the time to examine her properly. But now that she saw her, she could tell that Tomoyo was a wonderful young girl. Correction: she wasn't a young girl anymore, was she?

She had developed. She was no longer the cheerful, camera-wielding little girl following the Card Mistress. Without warning, Yelan bent down and took Tomoyo's chin into her hands. The Daidouji heiress bore her scrutiny well as Yelan ignored Syaoran's protests about how impolite it was. Hmm. Her son was getting a bit out of hand, now that she thought about it. He shouldn't be correcting her. Normally he didn't dare to, but he was changing as well.

She looked into Tomoyo's eyes and saw great pain and many secrets. But at the same time, she could see the bravery and kindness in them. "You have great power," she said, releasing her hold on the young woman.

"Thank you," Tomoyo replied steadily. If it had been Sakura, the Cardcaptor would have flinched and blushed.

The young Daidouji was a good match for her son. She might not have had any magical powers, but then again, neither had Meiling—and of course there were the benefits of an alliance with the Daidouji Corporation, which was rapidly growing. "Yes, I approve," she murmured to her son, who turned an angry shade of red.

"_Sakura's _my girlfriend," he muttered through gritted teeth. "Nothing's changed between us."

Yelan shook her head. "There has already been a great deal of changes, Xiao Lang," she said. "Perhaps only on your part, but there have been changes nevertheless." She patted her son on the head. "You have always been too old for your age. Now is not the time to cling to your childhood."

Syaoran choked. He was relieved that Tomoyo's Chinese still wasn't good enough for her to understand everything that they were saying, but he imagined that she could comprehend most of it—or she would have, if she was listening; she had had the common courtesy to withdraw a little so that she wouldn't hear what she had obviously realized was a private conversation.

"Are you going back to Japan now?" Yelan asked.

"What, you're really not going to put up a fuss about me going back?" Syaoran asked, his expression clearing. He had expected Yelan—or at least his sisters—to put up something of a fight. Barring his immediate family, there was always Meiling to think of. Whenever he came back for a visit, she invariably tried to persuade him to stay.

"No, unless perhaps Tomoyo could be persuaded to stay?" Xiefa asked.

Tomoyo shook her head. "I've already missed two days of school this week," she said, referring to the other day when she had cut classes to check on Syaoran the day he had found out about Fanren's death. "My mother will be furious if she finds out that I skipped any more."

"Then you should go back," Yelan agreed.

Syaoran was relieved, but he had the irritating suspicion that they were trying to set him up with Tomoyo. "Well, I did tell Sakura that I would be back by tomorrow," he said, as though to say, _lighten up already, I'm taken_.

"And Eriol's expecting me too," Tomoyo added. "If I'm not back at the time I told him I'd return, he'll set Ruby Moon on me."

Meiling cleared her throat. "Auntie, Tomoyo is the girlfriend of Clow Reed's reincarnation, Hiragizawa Eriol."

Yelan looked a little disappointed. "I see. What a pity."

"Mother!" Syaoran said. He had never wanted to punch his own mother before…

His mother's eyes twinkled. "All right, Xiao Lang, I didn't mean to imply anything. Please send my regards to the Card Mistress and Clow Reed. Are you two leaving immediately?"

Tomoyo showed them her plane ticket. "My plane's leaving in an hour."

"I've got my ticket too," Syaoran said.

"The car will take you," Yelan said. She watched the two of them climb into the Li clan limousine and smiled faintly.

"What a pity?" Feimei asked her mother, rolling her eyes. "You should have given them better advice than that, mother."

Yelan frowned. Even her daughters were getting more unruly. But then she broke out into a smile. "Those two will realize it eventually."

Xiefa spoke up. "Mother… she will cause him great pain," she said cautiously. Of the three sisters left, Xiefa had the greatest psychic power. "Pain to last many years, a terrible agony that will afflict the both of them."

"I know. I saw it in her eyes." Yelan's brow furrowed. "I cannot read their destiny fully, but I can see that it will be a time of great confusion for her and overwhelming rage on his part. When that times, I will give her sanctuary. And I must bear with my son's fury and coldness."

"What?" Meiling said. "I don't get it."

"Their love story isn't going to be a happy one," Fuutie translated for her.

"Oh." Meiling shrugged. "I could have told you that if you asked me."

* * *

Hearts from Aries

Now that he looked back on it, it all seemed like a really bad soap opera. And predictably enough, the two of them had gotten closer. And it had even gotten to the extent where Eriol started making excuses so that the two of them wouldn't be left alone together—and even Sakura lifted her eyebrows whenever the two of them talked.

Not that their 'significant others' gave any hint of even _thinking _about something beyond friendship between the two of them. On Sakura's side, she just seemed hurt that Syaoran didn't like talking about whatever it was that he talked about with Tomoyo, preferring to tell her about how the raven-haired girl was progressing in martial arts.

And for Eriol's part, he merely suspected that Tomoyo felt that her secrets were safer with someone who wasn't so close to her. It wounded him, but he couldn't very well say anything to her about it.

It wasn't surprising, really, that Sakura and Eriol felt left out. They sensed that Syaoran and Tomoyo had bonded in a way that they didn't understand, in a way that involved no one but themselves. As though it were just the two of them against the world, united by a common force.

So they tried to divert the two. When Sakura chattered, Syaoran would be watching Tomoyo out of the corner of his eye. When Eriol flirted with her, Tomoyo could simply make a seemingly innocent gesture that communicated her thoughts to Syaoran. Even the way they blinked or coughed conveyed something to the other.

And so they went on with secret signals and meetings in the evening at the dojo. It was only in their training sanctuary that they put their thoughts into words. It was comforting, for them to hear each other's soft, smooth voices, although they could see each other's thoughts so clearly without it that they could easily have done without it. No, their words were a luxury, and they enjoyed it whenever they could.

"Hi," she said, entering and inclining her head in a little bow when she saw him. She chuckled at the serious expression on his face. "Obviously you're doing some pretty deep thinking. Want to share what's on your mind?"

"Just wondering," he murmured. "About everything. About people. Like Sakura. She just… she's still exactly the way she was when we first met." He'd meant it to sound casual, but really, when he said it sounded like there was something wrong with Sakura.

But it was earlier that day. He had gotten so sick of her rambling on and on and on about this 'adorable little store' where she saw this 'cute stuffed animal' and then talked about maybe catching a movie later. Day in, day out. He could have recited her spiel along with her. Annoyed, he had snapped at her when she asked him whether he thought they should watch a romance or a comedy.

Her face had crumpled, scrunching up and going teary. She let her tears flow so easily, so freely, at the tiniest thing, so that he wondered what would happen when something really serious happened; still, he had apologized, and the two of them made up. But that didn't mean that he wasn't still confused about the whole affair.

"Nothing's changed," he said softly. His mother had said that things had changed—even if it was only on his part. Did that mean that he was changing… and leaving Sakura behind as he did? He tried to shake his head to clear the thought out of his mind.

Tomoyo kept her tone light. "Is that such a bad thing?"

"No… I guess not," he agreed, but it sounded forced. "I'm just in a weird mood, I guess. I can't help but feel like we're stuck in a rut somewhere along this road." _Do I really want to talk about this with her? She wants Sakura, doesn't she? What if she tells Sakura what I've been thinking…?_

_She wouldn't. _

"Oh, Xiao Lang. Things always change. Sakura _has _changed, no matter what you say about it," Tomoyo said. "But it's hard to tell when we barely even…" She exhaled slowly. She didn't really want to deal with that issue right now. "In a way, I guess you're right. She hasn't looked anywhere past the small world of Tomoeda. It's all so safe and confined inside her head. In a way I sort of envy her."

"I feel limited. There's nothing that I can talk to her about," he mumbled. "There's… I need something _deeper. _I _do _love her, but there's this sort of suffocated feeling that I sometimes get. Does that make me a bad boyfriend or what?"

"No, it makes you another normal guy out there craving for intellectual satisfaction," she said. "And strangely enough, there are actually tons of you out there who want something more. It's maddening, sometimes, when you can't talk to your number one person properly about what you really deem to be 'the deeper things'. Is that how you feel with Sakura?"

"Gods, yes. And I wish to hell that I didn't."

"You can't help the way you are." _Neither can I, Xiao Lang. _Her eyes were direct on him. "I don't like watching you suffer. And believe me, I _have _seen you suffering for a long time now. Since we were kids." She flushed at her boldness but stuck to her statement.

That was why she had fallen in love with him in the first place, wasn't it? She had seen his burdens, his obligations. And she had seen herself in him. Though she couldn't love herself for who she was, she could love Syaoran. He was better than her; he bore everything up without complaint, and she knew that compared to him, her troubles were trivial. But he didn't have to run to anyone for help, he didn't cry himself to sleep—he only accepted help when she insisted on giving it to him, when it was a pain that was beyond any human's endurance. He was stronger than she was.

That didn't stop her from wanting to take care of him the way he took care of her. She was frail and painfully powerless, all too aware of her mortality and her lack of magical power, but she would have laid down her life for him had it come to that.

If she had been in Fanren's place, she would have been glad to die.

He ran a hand through his hair, his eyes pointed in the direction of their sparring 'classmates' but not really seeing anything. "There are plenty of guys out there who would love to have a girlfriend like Sakura," he muttered.

"And those guys haven't got an edge over you."

He looked at her, perplexed. "I made a pledge to her, Tomoyo. I already told her that she was my number one. And I think that pretty much means forever."

She just stared back.

"Does that mean that I'm forever bound to Eriol?" she asked him. He flushed; she knew that that issue was still something that the two of them disagreed on, for the most part—with him maintaining that she would only hurt him more in the end, and with her saying that she would force herself to love him for now if she had to and then just ease it along later on. "Feelings change just as people do, Xiao Lang. Perhaps you fell in love with Sakura because you were looking for happiness. And then you found it. But the world isn't just about being happy."

"Then what is it about, Tomoyo? Is it like yours, where everything's about sacrificing yourself for everyone else's happiness?"

"I'm more selfish than you'd care to imagine," she told him matter-of-factly.

"Name an incident, then. When have you _ever _done something that _you _wanted?"

Her eyes clouded over. She couldn't tell him the complete truth, so instead she took a deep breath and told part of it. "Eriol."

"What!"

She looked dolefully up at him. "Don't look so surprised. Surely you knew. Surely you understood."

"But you were just sparing Eriol from the pain of getting rejected, right?"

"I…" she looked terribly ashamed of herself and was clearly regretting that she'd said anything at all. "I don't think you'll understand what it's like not being loved, Xiao Lang—because… because it's never happened to you before. I mean, there were always your family, and Meiling, and so on. Even when you had a difficult childhood, there were always people pinning their hopes on you and in a good way. Therefore you'll probably think that what I'm doing is horribly manipulative."

_Not being loved… _"No, please. Just tell me."

She blushed. "I… It's just…"

"You were saying that it's hard not being loved," he prompted.

"Yes," she burst out. "And then Eriol suddenly started telling me that he loved me when I had no idea—I never even thought of him that way. And then I saw you and Sakura and it just… it was just too much. I wanted someone to be _my _number one. You and Sakura had each other. I've never been my mother's number one, since all she sees me as is as failed clone of Nadeshiko. And then my father…" She trailed off. "If I had been his number one, he would never have left me there, or he would have at least brought me along or called sometimes." She closed her eyes, avoiding what she knew would be a stunned and pitying expression. She just couldn't bear seeing it. Not from him, of all people. "I'm always just excess baggage. There is no one who cares for me more than anyone else in this world."

His heart broke for her. If it was anyone else, he would have dismissed it as a typical sob story, but when she said it—there was something poignant and tragic about her that he couldn't quite describe. "Tomoyo—"

Good heavens. Surely he didn't… _love _her?

He closed his eyes. No… this was not happening. He and Sakura were supposed to live happily ever after for several lifetimes, be deliriously happy in a big house with a multitude of children, and have Tomoyo as the maid of honor at their wedding. Sure, he felt that he and Sakura were stuck in a rut, but there was no way that he could actually fall for someone else. He had bound himself to her, heart and soul. "You're not worthless. There are people who care about you. I don't think that you were thinking clearly about this, but I won't call your motives selfish."

"Do you think that you could possibly love someone else?" she whispered, so softly that he didn't hear her. She was relieved; had he heard what she was saying, he might have run away.

Syaoran studied her face. She wasn't crying. Instead, she sat there, frozen against him, as though she were afraid to move away. As though he was anchoring her to something, and he realized that she was anchoring him to something too.

She wished…

He wished…

… that one moment…

… could last forever.

Suddenly he noticed the silence in the dojo; there was no sound of the loud yells and people hitting the mats. Instead, he looked up to see the others staring at him and Tomoyo, and he knew how bad it must have looked to them; there was barely any distance between their heads, and none at all between their shoulders as they sat side by side, her hair brushing gently against his face.

He ignored them. For now, their world was built just around the two of them.

* * *

Hearts from Aries

It should have been a sign to them, but they ignored it. They were becoming much better at the whole 'telepathic communication' thing—much more effective than Eriol's, since it didn't need to use it consciously to pick up on whatever the other way saying. Like right now, in the classroom during a free period. To the casual observer, they weren't even aware of each other's presence, but it was actually the complete opposite. They were completely in tune with each other.

She was drumming her fingers idly on the desk, and he gave the very slightest of nods, staring out into space, as though he was merely collecting his thoughts, which caught the glance that those eyes sent in his direction too quickly for anyone to notice, and she smiled to herself. They both knew what they meant to say and understood each other—even if no one else did.

_I'm bored._

_Yeah, I'm bored too._

But they didn't know what they were anymore. They never spoke of the growing connection between the two of them. It was something that they shrouded in mere gestures, nothing that they put to words.

They couldn't, because if they did, the rest of their world would collapse around them.

"Hey, Tomoyo," Eriol said, jerking her attention back to him. "Spacing out again?" It seemed to be happening more and more frequently.

"Yeah," she said with a laugh. "I was just thinking."

He'd been feeling an odd sense of disquiet about Tomoyo and Syaoran lately. He _knew _that Syaoran and Sakura were, well, a match; just as he and Tomoyo were. But that didn't mean that he didn't get this prickly feeling that he was missing out on something—and Sakura seemed to have picked up on the same thing.

"So, did you hear about the festival coming up?" he said, effectively changing the subject. "I was hoping that you'd like to go with me."

He tried looking into her eyes to see what she was thinking at the moment and met with amethysts that had facets he couldn't understand. Short of reading her mind, he would never know—dejected, he resigned himself to waiting for her answer. It was kind of pathetic, really.

"Sure."

Sakura, on the other hand, was doing the exact same thing. If she had been an ordinary girl, she would probably have set up a network of her friends so that they could drop hints about the event and prod Syaoran into asking her. But that just wasn't the way she was; she believed in being direct and straight to the point. He glanced up from the book that he held open even though he wasn't reading it.

"Hey, cherry blossom," he said, smiling.

She blushed; she always did when he called her by the English words of her name. He could read her like the back of his hand; maybe better, because if you asked him to name how many times he'd twisted his hand or scarred it during his martial arts training, he wouldn't have been able to answer.

Sometimes he got fed up of it—of knowing _everything _about her. Because there was nothing left for him to know.

"There's this festival thing coming. Do you want to go together?" she asked. Huh. She hadn't even waited for _him _to ask her. Then again, he _had _been sort of-kind of distracted lately.

"Yeah, okay. Is your brother or Hiragizawa going to be there?"

She laughed. "Yes, both of them."

He cringed (and this time he didn't have to pretend; the very thought of Eriol and Touya together horrified him beyond belief… but then again, since when had he had to pretend, when had it become more common for him to put up a farce than to speak honestly?). "Gods, no. One alone is bad enough. Both of them there, though… that would be like getting the measles and having dandruff and watching acid rain fall all over your burning house. And that's _after _being castrated and undergoing Chinese water torture."

Sakura made a face at him. "Come on, they're not that bad. You've put up with worse than this. I really don't understand why you all hate each other. Okay, Eriol not so much—you're pretty much one-sided with the anger there. And I guess my brother's okay to hate. He's a pain, and—"

He let her ramble on a while, nodding at all the right intervals and adding the occasional chuckle. He glanced over at Tomoyo, who was also clearly doing the same thing to Eriol. All right, it wasn't quite the same thing—where Sakura was predictable, Tomoyo had to keep on her toes when handling her boyfriend. Hiragizawa Eriol wasn't read as easily as Sakura was. HE was a lot sharper than Sakura was, too.

But still, she would reply briefly to the gist of whatever he was saying, leaving the rest of her mind free to wander. And he caught the silent inquiry in her eyes as they met his for a millisecond before immediately switching back to Eriol, making it seem like something had just caught her eye for a moment before she realized that it was nothing.

_We're going to the festival._

_Yep, we are too_

Her eyelashes fluttered, once in Eriol's direction, then at him and Sakura.

_Let's all go together._

He tapped his index finger on his lips thoughtfully.

_Let me see if I can orchestrate it that way._

Tomoyo gave a tiny eye roll that Eriol didn't notice.

_I doubt it'll be all that hard._

Syaoran suppressed a grin, but she caught the corners of his mouth curving up the slightest degree. Too true, wasn't it?

"All right, all right, I can tolerate Hiragizawa _or_ your brother for one evening," he grumbled to Sakura. "If I swear to try to be nice to Hiragizawa and let him and his date come along with us, will you let me beg off on your brother, though?"

"Sure," she said immediately without stopping to think about it. "I'll tell Eriol. I'm sure that they'd love to come along with us anyway. In fact, I kind of was already planning to ask them."

She frowned. Why did she get the funny feeling that something was a little bit off about the way the conversation had turned out? As though it had been manipulated somehow… she brushed the thought out of her head and put a happy smile on her face. What did it matter? Syaoran was going, and so were Eriol and… Tomoyo.

He cleared his throat, and Tomoyo understood.

_It's set._

Tomoyo broke out into a winning smile that was directed in his direction just a split second before she flashed it in Eriol's direction, leading her boyfriend to believe that she was grinning at him. Lucky he had just made a joke at that moment.

_Hooray!_

Syaoran stifled the smile that threatened to break out on his own face. He liked seeing her smile out of genuine pleasure. It was beautiful. His gaze was steady on her for half a second too long, but only she saw it. She knew what it meant.

_I like it when you smile. It's pretty._

A light blush tinted her cheeks.

Yeah, they'd love to come along, all right.

Hearts from Aries

* * *

A/N: So, looks like it'll be over soon. To be honest, I've been getting a headache over this story. Maybe it's just writer's block, or maybe my interest in it is waning. But I promise not to abandon it and leave you all hanging about what happens. 


	8. Chapter 8

A/N: Hello, hello, hello. Exams day after tomorrow, but this one's for Brad Trinity 666. Also many thanks to my reviewers. Here's the eigth chapter. I think it'll hit double digits in chapters before it finishes. Anyway, enjoy!

* * *

"Has he been like this, all this time?" Xiao Long asked Meiling, watching Syaoran as he walked a few feet behind them in a detached fog, so distracted that he might as well have been dead to the world at that point despite the spectacular view from the top of the Empire State Building. "I thought…"

"That he wouldn't be all torn up? I'm not surprised that he's like this," Meiling sighed. "He was a lot more of a train wreck the last time I saw him. It was… two years ago." She shuddered. "He was even worse—he hid in the office all the time and he barely spoke two words to me—after nearly throttling me looking for his dearest beloved, that is. And he completely disregarded how Auntie Yelan must have felt, watching him acting like that. I mean, he didn't even show up for dinner most of the time." Her tone, formerly sympathetic, now held an edge of anger in it. "He was always working or studying or whatever. It nearly killed Auntie."

Xiao Long shook her head, knowing that Meiling was annoyed at how he had acted, not matter how patient she had been with him formerly. "And from the looks of it, it nearly killed him, too."

Syaoran frowned inwardly. He may have been caught up in his own thoughts, but did they really think that he was deaf? He could hear every word that they said. And to be honest, it was just annoying the hell out of him. Especially Meiling's little 'he-was-even-more-pathetic-and-whiny-and-reclusive-before' speech. As though he didn't know all that already? He didn't have to hear it.

_Mother understood why I was hiding from Meiling, _he thought. _It was because of _Tomoyo. _And because it was in _Meiling _who she confided in. Meiling could have told me something. I was her cousin, after all. But she didn't tell me a damn thing. _He glared at her, and she flushed but looked defiantly back at him.

That evening hadn't been all that eventful, five—no, four—years ago. They all just met at the shrine, as was typical for them—or they would have, anyway, if the girls hadn't insisted that they all meet up at the Daidouji residence instead. Tomoyo and Sakura had gone over to Tomoyo's house to get dressed up for the occasion—and Syaoran had been pleasantly surprised to see Tomoyo wearing the robes that he got her for her birthday.

She had taken his breath away.

"I don't look stupid in it, do I?" she asked him, her cheeks heating up as soon as the words left her mouth. She must have looked absurd—not just because she was unsure of how she looked, but because she was so obviously fishing for compliments. Especially from _him._ "Eriol keeps insisting that I'm just fine, but..." She grinned. "You know how he is. He's quite the ladies' man. He could tell the ugliest woman on earth that she was a goddess and she'd probably believe him."

He shook his head slowly—it was like time had stopped and nothing else mattered except looking at her. "You look perfect." Then he remembered himself just in time. On cue, he slipped his arm around Sakura. "And so do you, cherry blossom." She looked adorable, he had to admit, in a pink kimono that looked remarkably like the one that she had worn when they had been younger. It evoked fond memories.

But he couldn't help thinking that that was the problem. Nothing had changed—every day was the same. He looked into the mirror hanging in Tomoyo's living room and was surprised to realize that _he _had changed.

It was that day at the movies—the first time he had asked her to go do something with just him (other than martial arts practice)—that they were talking about it. Love, that is. Funny thing to discuss over coffee after just watching a kung-fu movie.

"I have to ask you—how do you do it?" Tomoyo had asked, stirring her third packet of sugar into her coffee. It tasted too sweet now, and was more like coffee-flavored sugar than sugared coffee. "Have a perfect relationship that lasts for years, I mean. It's just so difficult for me to imagine. You see all that sort of thing at the movies, but in reality it's a lot harder to grasp."

"I don't really know," he said honestly. "It… just kind of all fell into place at one point. What about you?"

"The person I love doesn't care for me."

He flinched. "But maybe it'll work out. Maybe you'll meet someone else."

She shrugged. "That's not the way I view things. If that was the case, it wouldn't be love." She took a sip of the coffee and made a face; she had put so much sugar into it that it was completely inedible. "I mean, I think that love is more than just… what does Sakura call it again? The 'hanyaan' feeling—being floaty. Like what she thought she felt for Yukito-san. And it's more than just turning red in the presence of that certain someone because you're embarrassed to be around them, although I have to admit that it happens to me sometimes." She turned pink at that and avoided his gaze.

"Then what do you think it is?" he asked her, looking intently at her. She still wouldn't meet his eyes.

"I think… well, loving someone… it's something akin to learning, I guess. About discovering each other every day. You know that that person is the reason why your sun rises and why the stars shine." She smiled, finally looking up at him. "It's something steadier than infatuation… something that develops gradually. I mean, feelings right now are just… well, feelings. I don't know whether we can rely on them."

"So how do you know that you can rely on your feelings of love for your number one right now?"

"Because," she had said simply, "I just do."

That had been some nights ago, and he couldn't get it out of his head. "The two of you don't look half-bad yourselves," Tomoyo said, smiling. She seemed positively euphoric tonight, and Syaoran arched his eyebrows up at her. She fanned herself with an envelope that she had picked up from the front table beside her. "Mm-hmm. Eriol, you look too good. Stop that right now."

Eriol laughed. "I will when you will." Syaoran ignored the little flip that his stomach made when she spoke to Eriol in that teasing, half-flirtatious tone. He was her boyfriend, for goodness's sake. Of course she spoke to him like that. There was no reason for him to get irritated. Most certainly nothing…

He felt a brotherly protectiveness come over him. But somehow, he knew that he would never have treated his own sisters with that same fierce covetousness.

"Beautiful dragon," Tomoyo told Syaoran, referring to the green one stitched on his black shirt. Immediately the prickly heat that had been building up angrily in his chest disappeared. "As a designer, I just can't resist. Can I take a closer look?"

"Sure," he said. She bent close to examine it and he felt her cool fingers slip something discreetly into his jacket pocket—the envelope. She was so skillful about it that neither Sakura nor Eriol noticed. "It was my father's, once," he managed to say, pretending that he hadn't felt anything.

"I ought to use dragons in my designs sometime," she murmured thoughtfully, regarding it now with professional interest. "What do you think, Eriol? You can wear my first test design—I could maybe make you a shirt. I think Sakura's gotten fed up with my costumes, don't you?" She didn't even hear Eriol's response as her eyes met Syaoran's silently, holding them there for a moment before she turned back to Sakura and Eriol.

"Hey, Tomoyo, can I use your bathroom for a sec before we leave?" Syaoran asked.

"Sure, go ahead. You know where it is."

Once safely behind the locked door, he pulled out the envelope that she had slipped him. Taped on its side was a piece of purple paper that was covered in Tomoyo's precise calligraphy—Chinese characters. He smiled proudly as he noted how well she wrote—or well enough, considering the short amount of time that she'd learned it all. They had had many happy lessons over that, at her house, and sometimes she came to his apartment and studied with him. In return, she helped him with his Japanese, and he had gotten higher grades than ever in that subject. Sakura and his classmates had marveled at the phenomenal improvement he had made in the subject, but they had no idea that Tomoyo had been behind it all. Nor did they know about how rapidly she had improved in Chinese—they had no chance to know, since they never spoke it in front of the others.

Another secret between them. And there seemed to be quite a lot of them these days. He felt mildly uncomfortable at not telling Sakura or Eriol anything, but he argued with himself that there was no reason to feel guilty. They were just friends teaching each other, learning together.

Again her words echoed in his mind: _I think… well, loving someone… it's something akin to learning, I guess. _The delicate faltering in her voice, the faint pinkness of her cheeks, the way she shook her head at herself when she spoke sometimes. He looked stupidly at himself in the mirror for a while before going on to read her letter.

_Dearest Xiao Lang,_

He shivered at that. _Dearest. _

_When you open the envelope I'm sure that you'll be proud of me. I just wanted you to know—I couldn't have done this without you. Thank you… for everything. I have no words to express how much you have helped me, and how grateful I am for everything you've done. _

There her hand seemed to hesitate, as though she had wanted to say something more, but had decided, at the last moment, not to. It was just as well, he supposed later on; otherwise he wouldn't have known how he would have reacted to what she would have written. Instead, he remembered her careful signature.

_Always and forever,_

_Tomoyo_

He opened the envelope.

_Dear Miss Daidouji,_

_We are pleased to inform you that you are formally accepted in Tokyo University for the Music course which you applied to. Contact details—_

He folded up the paper again, feeling dizzy. It had been a couple of months ago when he'd finally convinced Tomoyo to apply to Tokyo University for the music course because Tomoyo's mother had been in Amami when application time had come and had distractedly told Tomoyo to apply by herself and just use the family seal if a signature was necessary. But of course Sonomi hadn't expected Tomoyo to apply for _anything _other than a course pertinent to the management of Daidouji Corp, not after the many harsh conversations they had had on the matter.

At least, when they had had the time to speak to each other, and when Tomoyo gathered up the nerve to bring it up.

He was glad that it had happened; it was her first choice, or it would be if she ever mustered the courage to tell her mother. He just prayed that Sonomi would understand. It was Tomoyo's life, and she should be allowed to do as she wished.

_I'll protect her,_ he vowed. _With my life. _

He grew still as a soft, mischievous voice whispered in his ear. _But what if you had to choose between her life and Sakura's?_

"It will _never _come to that," he whispered harshly, not believing it even as he said the words. "Never. I… I love…" He faltered. He couldn't say Sakura's name. "Tomoyo?" he said uncertainly. He felt a pang of horror strike him. It was impossible. Quickly, he brushed the thought aside. He was getting carried away. He was just happy for her, that was all.

He stepped out, his eyes all lit up when they fell on Tomoyo. She was talking to Eriol, with his hand around her waist, and Syaoran went to Sakura to pull her out as well. But when they locked eyes again, for the briefest of seconds, and he very purposely let her see him slip the envelope into a drawer of the table just beside the front door just as Eriol and Sakura were steered forward—they felt that something deeper was going on.

* * *

Hearts from Aries

Sonomi Daidouji exhaled slowly, massaging her temples as the limo that had been sent to pick her up wound its ways through the quiet streets of Tomoeda from the airport. It had been such a long time since she'd seen Tomoyo—nearly a month, she realized. But since the New Zealand deal had closed so quickly, she'd decided to go back home.

_Tomoyo will be thrilled, _she thought happily. Although, she had to admit, Tomoyo hadn't been all that enthusiastic to talk to her of late. She chalked it up to the usual adolescent pangs (clearly forgetting that Tomoyo was growing up, for heaven's sake) and was simply too busy out with her friends and schoolwork to talk much. She made a mental note to ask Tomoyo how her classes were going.

This time she would keep her promise.

She had to admit that in the eyes of some people, she hadn't been a very good mother—always off somewhere closing business deals, talking down stubborn investors, and all the rest of that whatnot that cluttered her life as the head of the Daidouji Corporation. But at least Tomoyo understood perfectly that it was all for her future's sake anyway. Tomoyo had never once complained whenever she had to go off somewhere—not even, Sonomi reflected miserably, when she had to miss her only child's birthday. In a way she felt a bit disappointed that Tomoyo had agreed so gracefully and quickly with her decision; perhaps she felt that it was a sign that her daughter didn't care very much whether she was there or not.

But then, that had always been Tomoyo's way. She simply didn't want to make Sonomi feel bad.

She couldn't do anything about it. The deal was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that had garnered Daidouji Corporation millions of dollars.

She reflected that Tomoyo had always been a calm, stable child, and she'd never had any problems with her only daughter. Oh no, not Tomoyo. She had always accepted both the good and the bad with admirable poise. And Tomoyo… Tomoyo was the spitting image of the one whom she had loved the most.

_Nadeshiko…_

Her stomach gave a little lurch at the word, but she firmly ignored it. She wondered whether some people thought her psychotic for trying to make Tomoyo as much like Nadeshiko as possible, growing her hair long and teaching her music and even signing her up for modeling classes at one point (but though Tomoyo modeled a few times, it never really came to anything; her little girl simply protested that she was too busy with her singing to take it seriously). There was nothing wrong with trying to preserve the memory of the one that you loved the most.

"Tomoyo!" she called out as soon as she stepped out of the car. "I'm home!"

"Daidouji-sama!" one of the maids gasped, looking surprised and nearly dropping the feather duster she was holding. Sonomi guiltily realized that she should have phoned ahead to tell them that she was coming. The maid curtsied hurriedly. "Um, young mistress is out right now, at the festival with her friends."

"Oh," Sonomi said, feeling stupid. She frowned, covering it up well. "Well, I'd like you to go draw my bath and perhaps see to it that my luggage is put away. Did Tomoyo say what time she would be coming home?"

"No, ma'am. Young mistress did say that she would be home much later than usual, though, and that she would let herself in with her key."

"Mmm. Thank you." Sonomi dismissed her with an imperious wave of her hand and peeled off her coat, hanging it up on the rack. Then she took out her keys and opened the drawer of the table beside hers to put them inside.

An envelope?

Curious, she noticed the Tokyo University seal on it. _Oh, Tomoyo! _Her heart sped up as she opened it.

* * *

Hearts from Aries

"Enough with the sightseeing already, Meiling," he complained, finally stretched past his limits. At first he had been annoyed at her for her earlier comments, but to the devil with his pride and silence; he couldn't take any more of this tourist claptrap, lovely as New York was. "Can't we go do something sensible? When's the meeting that you were talking about going to be held anyway?"

Meiling looked caught off guard. "Er, well, you see, I was hoping that you and Xiao Long would get acquainted first," she said. Xiao Long, beside her, squirmed uncomfortably and moved away a little to let them talk.

"I thought you said no match-making!" he hissed in her ear, clearly infuriated.

"I'm not! Don't be ridiculous!" she defended herself. "All right, all right. The meeting's to be held later this afternoon anyway. Why don't you go back to your hotel and pop in that CD of hers? I bet that you haven't even listened to it yet." She gestured for Xiao Long to rejoin them, so that they could get a cab.

He glowered at her, but surrendered. She was right, anyway, much as he abhorred admitting it. "_Fine,_" he said grudgingly, as they hailed a taxi and sped back to the hotel.

"Can I beg off?" Xiao Long asked them. "I get a headache when I listen to myself singing. I know those songs cold anyway, and_ I_ don't have to make a decision. And no, I won't wander off by myself!" she added hastily when she saw the expression on Meiling's face. "I'm just going to go on the 'net. Scout's honor, Meiling-chan."

"All right, then," Meiling said, relaxing. "Syaoran and I have to talk anyway." She hesitated. "Tell… tell Eriol hello for me," she ventured, not meeting Syaoran's eye.

"Thank you very much, Meiling-chan. Li-kun," she added, nodding politely at him before turning on her heel and disappearing into her own suite.

"What's up with her?" he immediately asked Meiling. "And you, Meiling? I can't believe that suddenly you're letting her know everything that happened."

"Xiao Long deserves to know," Meiling said primly. "I don't want to hear anything from you against that. You'll see in the end that I'm right, Syaoran." She popped the disc into the player and nonchalantly changed the subject as the room was filled with the soprano strains of a Chinese love ballad filled with the tragedy of a stormy relationship. Syaoran winced; it wasn't exactly the kind of music that he wanted to be hearing right now. "Her voice is very beautiful," Meiling said.

"Yes, it is." And so sad.

In the other room, Xiao Long was talking to Eriol through the webcam. "Hi, Eriol" she said to him the moment his face came into focus. She pulled off her hat and sunglasses and smiled weakly at him.

"You don't look too well. I take it that whatever's going on down there isn't going very well," he said dryly.

"True."

"Idiot Syaoran," he mumbled to himself before focusing on her again. "Syaoran keeps beating himself up for what happened. Not that I'm morally against that, you know. I think he kind of deserves to agonize over it. Actually, if I had known that having you there would make him relive all those memories, I might not have been so opposed to it at first. At least he's suffering."

"Eriol!"

He offered her an apologetic little smile that didn't quite ring true. "All right, I'm sorry. I'll be a good, sympathetic little boy now and keep my evil comments to myself. Or you could just change your mind and come back here to Japan. I don't think that it's fair that you go on with this madness. You're not going to reveal yourself to him, and you're going to stick around until that blind fool realizes the truth? It's a waste of your time." He made a face at her. "Come on. How long are you going to wait?"

"Forever, if I have to," she said solemnly.

"It would be nice to see you again." The fake smile turned wistful. "I miss you. Even if you _are _inclined to mope whenever I see you. Oh no, don't give me that look—you know it's true. Underneath all those smiles of yours, it's not as though I can't see into your heart."

She scowled at him. "Reading my mind again, Eriol?"

"No," he said seriously. "But I think I understand you a little better now. If I had known you this well before, if you had just been a little more honest, or if I hadn't ignored the signs, then maybe we would have been spared this heartache—although I can't see how it would have been possible. Our fates were already written, and I'm sure that this was all part of it. It can never be changed."

"I wish that it could have been, though," she said in a low voice. "I was a fool."

"We all were." He looked at her with a fierce sort of hunger and despair in his eyes. "Won't you come back?"

"I can't." It was clearly costing her a lot to say this. "I have a budding career over here, and Meiling has been so good to me about it—I'll try to visit over the Christmas break, okay? I can only hope that I can help him too. It's been years and years, and for once… he hasn't changed. He changed so much when we were younger, but he didn't realize it at all. He helped me back then. It's my turn to help him now." _I wanted to, long ago. But he didn't need it, or he wouldn't let me._

_Now he does. And I'll try, whether he'll let me or not._

"He doesn't deserve it," Eriol muttered darkly.

"_Eriol,_" she warned him. "It isn't for you to decide whether he deserves it or not, even if you are Clow Reed's reincarnation. He's suffered so much. We all have." She softened. "Can't you forgive him?"

"Only for your sake," he replied.

"You forgave _me_," she said softly. "Why not him?"

"Are you the only one at fault here? I wanted—no, needed—your absolution as well. And… and I can't deny you anything!" he burst out. "You don't understand."

She looked at him with sad eyes. "But I do. Because I can't deny him either."

* * *

Hearts from Aries

"I'm going to go get ice cream," Tomoyo said suddenly. Eriol and Sakura were both already eating cotton candy, which she and Syaoran had declined. "I feel like a strawberry cone." She caught Syaoran's eye and tilted her head to one side meaningfully.

_Come with me?_

He gave her the tiniest of nods. _Sure. _

"Mmph," Eriol said, his mouth full of the sugary floss.

"What a gentleman," she complained, rolling her eyes. "It's okay, I can get it myself."

Eriol rolled his eyes at her and swallowed quickly. "Of course I'll come along with you. I don't like the thought of you going around unprotected. Can't let my fair lady get held up by admiring perverts or marauding muggers." He swept into a comical bow. "I am at your service, my beautiful princess."

She laughed but shook her head. "Save your breath, Romeo. I can take care of myself."

Sakura shrugged. "It would be better if you took him along with you anyway, Tomoyo, just in case."

"Wait, Hiragizawa, I'm going to go buy a chocolate one anyway, so it's all right if you guys just stay here," Syaoran said smoothly, just on cue. "You want anything, Sakura?" She shook her head no. The two of them started off towards the ice cream stand (strategically located at a fair distance from where they'd been standing), where there was thankfully a long line. At least Eriol and Sakura wouldn't puzzle over what was taking them so long.

And they _did _plan on taking their own sweet time.

She looked up at him, her eyes shining wordlessly, reflecting the stars. "Tokyo University," he said softly, involuntarily tucking back a strand of her hair. God damn it, was he flirting? No, certainly not. They were friends. She had a boyfriend. He had a girlfriend. There was no room for idiocy here. The arrangement was foolproof… except for the part where even _he _wasn't dense enough to not know that they were already in over their heads with each other.

"I know. Thank you so much, Xiao Lang," she whispered back. She expressed her joy in a way that was very different from Sakura; whereas Sakura was inclined to be bouncy and cheerful, she reined in her pleasure in a refined way that made her seem so much older than she was. "I'm so happy I think I could die." _The only thing that I need more is you._

"I'm glad," he answered. "I'm happy that you're following your heart for once, Tomoyo. I don't want you to make sacrifices that might make you regret them later. I want you to be able to look back on life and say that you lived it to the fullest and… I guess that I'm being corny."

"Oh no. Believe me, you're not."

All too soon, they were at the front of the line, and Syaoran heard Tomoyo sigh lightly in disappointment. He knew what she meant, even if she didn't speak out. Both of them looked at each other as they placed their orders. "One strawberry cone and one chocolate, please."

"Right away," the apple-cheeked woman behind the counter said. She beamed benevolently at the two of them and giggled when Syaoran unconsciously brushed against her hand then blushed. Tomoyo turned the palest shade of pink but made no comment. They were so sweet together! (Forgive her, for she knows not what she does). She handed them two towering cones. "You two make a lovely couple."

They both choked. "Er, no, I'm not his girlfriend," Tomoyo said, blushing madly. Oh God, how humiliating. Syaoran was probably embarrassed and repulsed by the very idea. She sneaked a glance at him and saw his cheeks burning, but not looking disgusted.

Did he…? Could he possibly…?

You'd think that she'd have caught on by now…

"I'm so sorry," the woman apologized, not looking sorry at all. She looked mischievously amused, if anything, as though she was sure that they were only denying it. "It's just that the two of you have a sort of glow around you when you look at each other. And your clothes seem to match so well, as though you were both dressed for each other in your Chinese costumes. I get a little carried away. Although," she added, her eyes twinkling, "I think I'll let the both of you have these ice creams on the house. For being such an adorable pair. Even if the two of you aren't together, I think that there's something like magic connecting you."

Tomoyo's hand flew to the charm around her neck. "Um, thank you," Syaoran said, not knowing what else to say under the circumstances. He was so red that he might as well have been a tomato. The woman giggled and shooed them away, saying that the line had to keep moving.

"Honestly," Tomoyo said, trying to will away the heat that remained stubbornly in her cheeks. She wasn't someone who blushed all that easily, but she seemed to do it quite a lot in Syaoran's presence. She wished that she could be more the way she was in the old days, when she was calmer and more stable around him—and not at all inclined to turn red. "That was an ordeal."

"Let's walk slowly," Syaoran suggested. "I don't really feel up to watching Hiragizawa and Sakura get high on their cotton candy." It was a flimsy excuse, but at this point, he couldn't come up with any other.

"Yes, let's," she agreed quickly. A little too quickly, as though she was grabbing at any excuse possible to spend a little more time with him. He scolded himself for thinking such conceited thoughts, but the way she looked at him, he felt it to be true.

One part of his brain was telling him to rush straight back to Sakura and forget that this whole thing was happening. Before it was too late… and if he spent all that much longer in her presence, it would be much, much too late to stop.

And the rest of him was telling that part to shut the hell up—it was too late already, whether he liked it or not, and whether he rushed to Sakura or not.

She sighed. "It's been a wonderful evening so far."

Hearts from Aries

* * *

A/N: That's all for this installment. Hope you liked it. Remember, more reviews equals faster updates. Thanks for reading! 


	9. Chapter 9

A/N: It's been FOREVER since I updated, I know. I blame writer's block, even though I've had this chapter in my head for a long time now. But recent events in my life influenced parts of the chapter. Ugh, don't you just hate it when your personal life intrudes on your writing? Anyway, I apologize to the sweet reviewers who encouraged me to update... gomen!

I'll save the rest of my A/N for the end. This one's for all of you nice reviewers out there, particularly BradTrinity666 and Manga-Greed. Without further ado, I present Chapter 9.

* * *

"You guys sure took your time," Eriol said, slipping an arm around Tomoyo

"Long line," she explained, licking her ice cream. Syaoran couldn't hide a smile. Her cellphone began ringing—was that the song that she had sung at her last concert? He smiled at the memory that her ringtone evoked of Tomoyo standing in her long, flowing gown made in the Chinese style, the Li clan charm around her neck—her only ornament—a beautiful picture, her voice filling the hall with a haunting love song. Her voice had held everyone spellbound.

Especially him. Especially when her amethyst eyes had frozen on him, unable to tear away, although no one else seemed to realize that their gazes had locked (a lot of people actually assumed she was staring at Eriol, who was sitting right next to him). It felt as though those eyes would never leave his. Not that he wanted them to.

"Sorry, guys," she said, moving away slightly. "Excuse me a sec, will you? Moshimoshi?"

Then her brow furrowed. "Hello, mother. I didn't know you were coming home... you should have called me earlier." Then she gasped, and a strange succession of emotions flitted across her face—shock, horror, and then grim defiance. "You saw my acceptance letter? When?"

Eriol was completely mystified when he saw Syaoran go rigid when he heard those words. Tomoyo hurriedly covered the mouthpiece of her phone. "Um, excuse me for a moment, you guys," she apologized. "I think that you three had better go on without me. I really have to talk to my mother right now, and it seems as though… as though it might take a while."

She held eye contact with Syaoran and he nodded in understanding, taking Sakura's arm. "I'm going to take Sakura home now," he said softly. "Touya will kill me anyway for letting her stay out so late." He led her away, but not without sending Tomoyo a last, anxious glance over his shoulder.

_I'm all right, _her eyes said (unconvincingly).

_I'm here if you need me, Tomoyo._

Indecision played on her features before she shook her head slightly. "I'm fine," she whispered.

He blanched and disbelief etched itself all over his face, and he seemed torn between walking away with Sakura and running back to her side, but she shook her head almost imperceptibly. _What I need you to do is go—get Sakura away. I need to handle this without her knowing…_

_I understand._

Eriol, however, was not to be deterred—not the he really knew what was going on anyway. "Tomoyo?" he asked her gently.

"Not_ now, _Eriol_,_" she said emphatically, walking away to relative privacy under the trees away from the crowd. He followed her. He reasoned that it was what a good boyfriend would do anyway—disregard her wishes if it was for her own good. She needed moral support, even if he wasn't exactly sure what he was supporting. She gave him a look which he blandly ignored, so she pretended that he wasn't there.

"Yes, I did apply. I…" Her frustration was beginning to become evident. "No, I wasn't hiding it from you! I meant to tell you later on."

What was she talking about? When he looked into her eyes he desperately wished that he could drown in her emotions. But it was more like falling into a vacuum with the emptiness crushing him. Clow Reed—well, to hell with that. He wasn't like that. Clow Reed would have known what to do and what she was thinking and whatever the hell Tomoyo was fighting about with her mother.

Frustrated, his magical energy welled up inside of him, summoned unconsciously by his emotions as Tomoyo spoke to Sonomi in a tightly contained voice.

She bit her lip. "Mother, please. This is something that I really want and—no. No! Can we talk about this later? It isn't about him. That picture—he…" She couldn't believe it. Her own mother had just broken into her drawer and found that picture of Syaoran, found the letter from him. She couldn't believe that her mother had the nerve to drag Syaoran's name into the whole affair. It wasn't like Syaoran had done anything. It had all been her decision.

Tomoyo looked close to tears, but when she saw him watching her, she turned her back on him. "Mother, how dare you even suggest that?" She tried to avoid Eriol's gaze, but evading it soon became impossible. Instead, she resorted to the usual wall that she put up, placing it like a shield between them, and her eyes were blank and meaningless. He couldn't tell at all what was going on or what she was even feeling. Not anymore.

Eriol watched her emotionless face, knowing that underneath it all was another flesh-and-blood human who knew how to feel. He was sick with the longing to know what was going on. He couldn't help her unless he knew. With that last thought inside his head, he felt himself growing tired from holding his powers in check. They burst through, tendrils of magic emanating from him and to Tomoyo.

"Mother, I—"

She stiffened in mid-sentence, and she stared frozen at him. "Eriol? Eriol, what are you doing?"

He didn't answer her, his eyes transfixed on a point just above her shoulder. He could feel resistance, as though her mind was trying to push away from his; but it wasn't like she had any magic. He could read the frustration that was floating foremost in her mind—anger at her mother for being neglected. He could see how Tomoyo hated being 'another Nadeshiko'—someone whom Tomoyo felt she could never measure up to; how Tomoyo had cried the night before her birthday because Sonomi hadn't even bothered to come, even though she'd promised to arrive that evening; how Tomoyo wanted to break away and take up music in college but Sonomi insisted that she take a business course.

She'd never said anything, not once.

And then he could see one thought clear in her mind: _How dare you._

Before he realized his mistake and pulled away, he was pushed out of her head by another force, so strong that it sent him reeling. _But Tomoyo doesn't have any magic, _he thought, dazed with the brutal intensity of the retaliation—and this was a power beyond anything that Sakura—or even he—had. Tomoyo's eyes blazed with fury as she snapped her cellphone shut, ignoring the fact that her mother was demanding to know what had just happened.

Her hand flew out and slapped him.

Numb, he felt nothing as the ring that he had given her scratched across his face, leaving a long red mark that Tomoyo, blinded with rage, couldn't see. Somewhere in the back of his mind he wondered how she'd even _felt _his intrusion, much more been able to somehow block him. She didn't have magic… And even if she did, no one but Sakura should have been able to resist his power. But this dim question went largely ignored as she stared at him, clearly wishing for his death. She was clutching at a charm around her neck, breathing hard as her fingers curled around it.

"I can't believe you just did that!"

The words were worse than the slap.

"Tomoyo, I'm sorry, I just lost control—"

Furious tears were building up in her eyes. "_No! _How much did you see?" Had he seen what a monster she was? Had he seen that it had all been a farce?

He probably hated her, but at the moment she didn't really care. Damn him! She had never wanted him to know. If had, she would have told him. Didn't he understand that? She tried to tip her head back, to prevent her tears from spilling over. But they already had, and she couldn't stop them.

Those thoughts were hers, to be shared only when she wanted them to be, a gift that she gave only when she saw fit to do so. But not anymore.

"I only wanted to help," he muttered pathetically, dying inside.

"_You wanted to help?_" she repeated incredulously. "So you took what was mine? You as good as _raped _me, Eriol!"

Shocked, he could only stare at her.

"_What gave you the right?_"

"But I didn't mean to—"

"Don't try to justify yourself! I wish I was dead. I wish _you _were dead."

"Tomoyo—!"

But she was already gone.

* * *

Hearts from Aries

"Listen to this next track," Meiling suggested to him when she noticed that he liked it so far (or at least he hadn't offered his usual 'constructive' criticism, as he liked to refer to it; most other people would call it unnecessary torture). "I guarantee that you'll love it. What do you think about her other songs?"

His brow was furrowed in concentration. "It's… it's very powerful," he said slowly. "She sings with a lot more passion than most other singers. That's good, I guess." _But it reminds me too much of someone else. Why…? She never… never sang like that… except…_

There was another person out there who sang in the same way, her voice melting into the words as though her life depended in letting them out. And he had watched her with his heart in his throat as her song wrapped around him, circling him much in the same way his magical charm circled her neck.

Meiling smiled brightly. "Yes, she does. And they say that her technical skill is really good—she has a lot of power in her higher notes, did you notice?"

"Mmph," he said, noncommittal as she pressed the button and started another Chinese love song revival, one resurrected from ancient melodies that spoke of his childhood. He listened wistfully to the words. It had been his secret favorite when he was younger, if only because it had lovely harmony. He never admitted to his sisters (or to Meiling) that he had felt the lyrics to be hopelessly romantic. It just would have been weird to make such a statement to them.

They would have called him gay.

He winced, thinking about it. There were better things to think of.

And the thought that came to mind, while not necessarily better, was more important to him. His eyes flew open and he whirled around to face Meiling.

"Xiao Long. Tell me when you met her." he demanded.

"What?" she said, looking surprised. "Uh… that was… a few years back. She enrolled in Hong Kong at the same college as I did." She cowered a little under his intense stare. Oh boy—if anyone saw her like this, they would laugh. Ice Queen Li Meiling, scared? The girl who reportedly had the blood of snakes flowing through her veins?

They would never believe it.

"And what course did she take in college?"

Meiling's mouth opened and then closed.

"Music, right?"

"Yeah, of course—she's a singer, after all," Meiling said evasively.

"And by the way, is she the same singer who ran out on a boy who loved her like a fool many, many years ago, that night when…"

A strange light flickered in Meiling's eyes. "Yes, Syaoran. She's the same singer who cried herself to sleep for an entire year and only stopped because she knew she was keeping me from sleeping properly—and even then, I can sometimes hear her in the bathroom at midnight, saying your name. And you know what? It kills me. And it's killing her, and it's killing you, and it's a miracle that we aren't all already dead because it took you forever to realize that she was right there in front of you."

"She's Tomoyo."

"Yeah. Yeah, she is," Meiling said, not looking quite displeased although still a little frightened (and you would be too, if Li Syaoran faced you with _that _expression on his face). She looked, if anything, irritated and a little impatient, with a 'thank-God-you-finally-got-with-the-program' sort of look plastered on. "And I was wondering how long it would take you to find out. I thought that you would recognize her on the spot, actually—but then, it's been four years..."

"Don't remind me," he said heavily. "Why the hell didn't you tell me?"

"She asked me not to. She only came because I begged her to do it—but she told me that it was up to you to recognize her at all. I've been so concerned, Syaoran… you haven't been—"

He cut her off abruptly. "What happened to her, after…?"

"She came to Hong Kong, naturally," Meiling answered briskly, her voice blending with that of the song playing in the background. _His old favorite. He had told Tomoyo that he had liked it once. And she'd never forgotten. _"She had all her money transferred to a different bank account under another name and managed it so well that her mother wasn't able to find out what happened—she had some help, though, Auntie gave her a hand with that, and you know how much weight the Li name carries. She bought a ticket and then flew over. Your sisters were very kind to her while she was here."

"You lied to me! You said that she wasn't there," he said furiously. "Even mother lied to me when I asked her—"

"You asked us whether Daidouji Tomoyo was there," Meiling said. "There wasn't anyone by that name. Only Lin Xiao Long, the music student. Do you know what she told me?" Her voice was bitter. "She said that Tomoyo was dead—and that she hoped that you would forget that she ever existed. She loved you, Syaoran, even though…"

"Even though she left." He shook his head. "Even though she wouldn't even let me know that it was her until I found out for myself."

His cousin flared up at him with those words. "And did you, Syaoran? Did you know that it was her? You keep going on and on about how much you love her, how you can't forget her—and now that she was right in front of you, you didn't even recognize her!"

"You don't understand," he said softly. "It was like… I hadn't wanted it to be her. Because she left me, and I thought that was the end of my world. You just don't get it, Meiling. It hurt beyond anything. I've done nothing to deserve to get her back."

"You did nothing to deserve having her leave you like that," Meiling snapped back. "But you _will _deserve getting a punch in the face courtesy of yours truly if you don't run over to her and get on your knees and finally let the two of you stop being miserable." Her tone softened. "Look, Syaoran. She may not act like it, but she's been hurting all this time too. And she's never forgotten you. Those songs were all for you. She's never dated—like a certain _someone _I know. Not since what happened. Even the name was for you, idiot. Xiao Long. She said that it was because of a shirt that you were wearing that night."

"The dragon," he said, his eyes widening. "Meiling, I—"

"Just go!" she snapped, pushing him out the door. She heard the thud of his footfalls dashing towards Xiao Long's—no, Tomoyo's—room, and she felt her heart break. She had never forgotten him either, but by now she had realized that she wasn't his destiny.

But Tomoyo was.

* * *

Hearts from Aries

Syaoran was already home in the space of the time it had taken Tomoyo to slap Eriol, scream at him, and then run away. He had just been about to change into his favorite pair of blue-and-white striped pajamas when he felt strong, familiar magic being released, including a trace of his own—the charm. "Tomoyo," he muttered, and then wrenched the door open and ran out to look for her. The charm wouldn't have activated unless someone had attacked Tomoyo.

Turning around the corner, he didn't see the sorry-looking girl who approached his apartment door and rang the doorbell.

She rang it eight times (she counted, and so did Syaoran's irate neighbors who yelled unprintable things at her). _He has to be home. He… he said that he would be here for me if I needed him…_

_Stupid, he didn't say anything. You just thought… or maybe wished…_

"Must be a lover's quarrel," one woman said. Apparently the housewives didn't have enough to do and delighted in gossiping about the teenage boy living on his own nearby—and the vision of loveliness standing at his doorway was fair game for their speculation. "Although I've seen that boy a lot with Kinomoto's daughter, always off by themselves in his rooms. Honestly, kids today. They're so loose."

At that remark, Tomoyo turned to face her with a look on her face that made the other woman shrink back; it was regal, dignified, and spoke of her queenly breeding despite the humiliated redness of her cheeks. Finally, after waiting for what seemed a lifetime, she started up the stairs towards the roof, trying to ignore the disapproving whispers from Syaoran's gossipy neighbors from behind her.

Around the parks of Tomoeda, Li Syaoran was muttering darkly in extremely colorful and inventive language that made passers-by shrink away from him as he raced down the streets. Finally he stopped for air and frowned.

_Think, Li Xiao Lang. Start using your head instead of your feet for once. Where would she go if she was in trouble…?_

_To _you_, dimwit._

He ran back, and nearly collided with the nosy Sasahara-san, his annoying neighbor whom—although he didn't know it at the time—was the one who had made the comment which made Tomoyo's cheeks burn with shame just moments earlier. "Li-san, there was some girl hanging around your apartment just a moment ago," she said, turning her nose up. "Did you know her? Blackish-purple hair, big violet eyes. Wearing violet robes or some other fancy costume, obviously from the festival. I think she went up to the roof."

"_Hae, _thank you," he said before speeding past her.

"_How rude!_" Sasahara-san said audibly. He let the comment slide as he mounted the stairs and found Tomoyo standing near the edge, looking forlornly down at the suffused glow of the lights of Tomoeda. On a whim, she pulled out her phone. Twelve missed calls, forty-two text messages, and the phone started ringing again a split second after she registered all of those.

_Sorry, mother. _

With a sigh, she threw it off the roof, smiling brokenly as her ears strained to hear the odd sound of metal against pavement and wondered whether she would have the courage to follow it with her own descent. She could already envision her form, a black-haired girl in a shroud of purple. She had no illusions of the ugliness of it; no, she was pretty, and she knew that herself. She would seem to fly, just for a moment, perfectly hanging from puppet strings. But those strings would be cut the moment she stepped off. That would be a lovely way to end it, she supposed; and she could envision a picturesque image of a broken doll lying on the street, half-lit by the apartment and road's lights with a pool of blood forming underneath her. Picturesque and tragic.

"Don't stand so close to the edge."

And with those words she simply turned around and walked away from the night she had wanted to be enveloped in. That voice. That single sentence. Just hearing them… she couldn't go through with it.

She looked miserable; the careful knot that she had arranged earlier with flowers lay in tumbledown curls around her face, which was streaked with tears. Wordlessly, she let him put his arms around her and cried on his shoulder.

"I'm so stupid," she said, over and over again. "I hate myself. I wish… I wish I was dead."

"It's all right, Tomoyo," he whispered in her ear. "Don't die. I don't want you to ever be taken away." Then he went completely out of his head. "I love you."

She stared up at him, her purple eyes widening. The next thing he knew, they were kissing; her lips tasted like tears and strawberry ice cream. There was a desperation in her that he had never felt in Sakura, but he didn't think it at the time. In fact, he wasn't thinking of Sakura at all. All he was aware of was this girl, in his arms, who had been hurt so badly—

—and whom he already admitted to loving.

He held onto her for what seemed like an eternity until finally, without even letting one syllable drop from their mouths, they both started down the stairs.

"_Kids,_" he heard Sasahara -san sniff with disdain as they passed by her, hand in hand and unsure of what they were doing, but ready to do it anyway. But at that moment, as they went into his room and kicked the door shut, he really didn't care.

* * *

Hearts from Aries

"Has it ever occurred to you that you've never _tried _to love anyone other than him?"

Tomoyo sighed, looking away from Eriol's eyes peering at her through the webcam. "Eriol, we've argued about this how many times now? Six… hundred?"

"Don't exaggerate," he said, his voice brittle as shale.

"I tried, Eriol, I swear that I did. I became your girlfriend, didn't I? Not that that was a hardship, of course," she added hastily. "You were a great boyfriend. Any sane girl would have loved you."

"Did _you_?"

She hesitated. "Do you want me to tell you the truth?"

He swallowed hard. "Yes. Yes, I do. I don't want any more lies." He could see the pain that he'd inflicted by reminding her of all the falsehoods and half-truths that she'd left between them, and he wished that he could take the words back. But another part of him—stung by the thought that even after four years of him _still _going after her, she was there, in New York, after his cute little descendant once again—kept the sorry side of him quiet.

"You don't want to hear it," she warned him.

"So you didn't?"

"That wasn't what I said. But I'm telling you now—you don't want to hear it."

He lifted his chin defiantly. "Try me."

"Then yes, I did. I still do," she said softly. "There were many, many times when I felt that I should just give up on Xiao Lang and fall completely for you. I could see what kind of future we would have had, if I had pulled out then and there, before he and I got in too deep with each other. And that future… it would have been very happy. I already knew it. And I wanted it." She stopped at the expression on his face and twisted her hands in her lap. "I _told _you that you didn't want to hear it."

"You wanted it," he stated.

She nodded. "Badly." Who wouldn't snatch at that sort of chance for love, when you were as starved of it as she was? And Eriol—Eriol loved her, with stability and kindness and genuine adoration, with all the fun and laughter and sweetness that anyone could have asked for.

"But you wanted him more."

There was a moment of silence.

"That's true."

"You never really _tried_, Tomoyo," he muttered. "All the times you were with me, can you honestly say that he wasn't always there, lurking in the back of your head? Can you say that each time you looked at me, you weren't thinking of him instead?"

"Yes. Yes, I can. Not every time—it happened a lot more than it should have," she admitted. "But don't even think for a moment that it had something to do with you, Eriol. You would have been enough. _More _than enough. And I did love you—_do_." She bit her lip and sighed. "But who can explain the course a heart chooses to take? There's no more reason for it than the path of a leaf fluttering down from the tree."

"If it doesn't work out over there…" Eriol hinted.

She blinked and smiled at him with wary eyes. "Yes?"

"You always have a place here. You know that, right?" He sighed. "As… friends, even. Like we are now."

"I know," she said, her lips curving upwards in a wistful little smile. "I don't think Sakura-chan would be too happy about my presence there, though, if I did choose to go back."

"I rather think she misses you terribly."

"Oh great. She misses me, so when we see each other, she'll hug me, and then pull out a knife—"

"Don't even joke about it."

She shrugged. "I don't expect her to love me."

"You didn't expect _anyone _to love you," he muttered.

* * *

Hearts from Aries

"_Sakura_. Open up!"

She jolted awake in her bed, rubbing the drowsiness out of her eyes. She was a bit irritable at being woken up just half an hour after she'd managed to doze off. "Who…?" At her side, Kero immediately morphed into his true form, baring fangs just waiting to attack whoever it was tapping on her window. She closed her eyes and detected a familiar aura. "Uh, Eriol? Is that you?"

"No, this is some ghost of a mad axe murderer just waiting to have a couple of swings at that pretty little head of yours."

"_What_?" she yelped, diving back under the covers.

"That's Eriol, all right," Kero grumbled, turning back into his false form and opening the window for him. Eriol vaulted inside.

Had Sakura seen Tomoyo earlier, she would have said that she couldn't judge which of the two of them looked worse. Both of them normally looked impeccable, so that only highlighted how horrible Eriol looked now. Where Tomoyo had looked like a pear blossom crushed underfoot, Eriol looked like a wounded lion, all the pride bleeding out of him in pain.

"Please help me, Sakura. I've been looking for Tomoyo everywhere. Sonomi-san is furious too—she didn't come home tonight. And her cellphone's dead. I don't know where she could have gone, and for some reason I can't sense her aura at all. I thought that she could be here with you…"

"_What_?" Sakura repeated, even more loudly this time.

Eriol winced. "You'll wake up your father and brother."

The Mistress of the Cards looked too distressed to listen properly to him. Perhaps, in retrospect, it hadn't been such a good idea calling on Sakura for help. While she was pretty handy as a search party, she wasn't exactly someone who handled panic and pressure well. "But this is important! What did Aunt Sonomi say? Does this have anything to do with that call from earlier?"

"Ikindofreadhermindwithoutmeaningtoandnowshereallyhatesme."

This took half a second to process in her still groggy mind. But when she finally got it, it had the effect of _extremely _black coffee to her consciousness. _"You what?_" she screamed. Now he ducked for cover as the 'Wrath of Sakura', which Touya had told him about many, many times (and those accounts, already gruesome, paled considerably compared to the real thing), turned on him.

"Well, no wonder she ran away! Tomoyo's always been sensitive about hiding her thoughts from other people!" So she had noticed after all. She had just chosen to gloss over it, believing it to be something of little consequence, believing that it was already an inherent part of Tomoyo.

"I didn't mean to!" he wailed. He looked so woebegone that she felt her fury ebbing away despite herself. She could hate him later, when they found Tomoyo and she assessed the damage he had done to her best friend.

Touya came banging in her door. "What's with all the noise, kaijuu—what the hell do you think you're doing, having _him _over here in the dead of night?" he roared when he caught sight of Eriol, his brotherly instincts kicking in immediately. Eriol saw Yue's false form behind him, Tsukihiro Yukito.

"We need your help," Sakura said. "Tomoyo's missing."

Touya's rant stopped abruptly. He looked suspiciously at Eriol, who didn't seem to be lying. "Kid, we need details first."

Half an hour later had the story out of Eriol as they sat around the kitchen table. Yue, now in his magical guardian form, looked compassionately down at him—it was compassion that Eriol felt that he didn't deserve at all.

He was a creep.

"So let me get this straight," Touya said dangerously. "You pried into her mind while she was dealing with her mother about a college application, under extreme stress and after she specifically asked you to leave her alone?" Eriol remembered at the last minute how Tomoyo had mentioned (in one of her rare moments of opening up to him) that she and Touya had always been fond of each other, bonded by their being protective of Sakura and because he watched over her along as her older cousin. "Do you have any idea how intensely stupid that was?"

"I told you, I just lost control!" he defended himself. "Look, I'm sorry, and I want to tell Tomoyo that, and I will when I find her… but first I just want to make sure she's safe right now."

"Tomoyo's vulnerable right now," Kero said anxiously. "All it takes is an invitation from someone… a place to crash for the night…"

Yue looked calmly at them. "You mentioned magic, Hiragizawa-san. Think. You are not Clow Reed's reincarnation for nothing. If not from you, and not from Mistress Sakura—and I'm presuming this because she has shown no sign of recognition at that part of your story—where could she have gotten it? Did it feel familiar?"

Eriol's brow knit. "Yes… somewhat." He hesitated. "It felt… like I was battling part of myself, and yet _more _than myself." He sighed ruefully, trying to make sense of it. Then comprehension began to dawn in his eyes.

Yue nodded as he registered the sudden realizations flickering in Eriol's head. "Daidouji Tomoyo may be vulnerable, but she isn't a fool. She's too smart to fall for anything of the sort, Cerberus. If you ask me, she would have gone to someone familiar—someone whom she could rely on not to contact any of us, because she must have known that it would slip to Hiragizawa-san. There is one person who, firstly, can be trusted to be quiet no matter what, secondly, trusted to keep his word when he gives it, and thirdly, hates you very much."

They looked at each other. "Li Syaoran."

* * *

A/N: cue scary, horror-ish music here I'm sorry for leaving all of you on a cliffhanger like that! But I swear that if I get enough reviews, I'll post the next chapter ASAP. I expect it to be a little longer than this one and may be the actual end for this story. So please, if you like it, review. If you don't like it, well, you can review anyway and tell me what you think is wrong with it. Thanks for reading this far! I hope to hear all your reactions.

* * *


	10. Chapter 10

A/N: Wahhhhhhh! Gomenasai for taking so long to upload this. I did lots of last-minute tweaking... (TT) What really brought me to my senses was the latest review I got from kawaiiness, whose review really made me happy and feel guilty about not posting. Two years... what's wrong with me?! Honestly, I meant to post this as soon as I got Riddler03's--formerly Brad Trinity 666--review, but I did so much editing on it that it stretched on for months. Gomenasai! College life is really hectic and I've got the worst case of writer's block. I know how insane it was to leave you guys on a cliffhanger like that for ages... I feel like apologizing a million times over. By now most of you will probably have forgotten this story.

And so, here we are. I won't say that the end is in sight because I began with the end, but now we're nearing full circle. I would like to thank everyone who reviewed, especially the ones without ffnet accounts because I can't reply to you there. Reading your comments always makes me happy! More A/N later, I'm impressed by anyone who took the time to read this long A/N. So without further ado, I present to you Chapter 10!

* * *

Hearts from Aries

"Xiao Lang," Tomoyo whispered, finally disentangling herself from him. They had kissed for what seemed like an eternity, what seemed like three seconds, and suddenly she'd found herself tugging his shirt off... that was when she realized that they had reached a boundary. Gently she put a hand on his chest and pushed him away. "Stop." It took a great deal of effort to wrench the word out from her throat. If there was anything that she could have given for him to ignore her and go on, she would have sacrificed it. But she merely sat silently on the bed beside him as he slowly drew away. Of course he would listen. And in the long run, perhaps it would be for the best.

"I…" He shook his head to clear it. "Tomoyo, I…"

She let out a low laugh. "We're not thinking straight, and I don't want us to do anything that we're only going to end up regretting soon."

He kissed the tears away from her eyes. "I'm sorry. I… now I feel stupid, and it seems like I was taking advantage of your vulnerability…"

"Like you would ever do that?" she asked pointedly. "I _know _you, Xiao Lang. I would never think that of you. You're just not like that."

Drawing her close to him, he sighed, breathing in the scent of her hair. She always smelled nice—and he had been taking more notice of her heady fragrance in the last few months that they'd spent together—and up close, she smelled even better, even more intoxicating. "But now I _am _thinking straight. And I know that what I said up there… it's true."

"Xiao Lang…" she wound her arms around his neck. _If I could only die now, when everything is perfect…_ "I love you too. So very much. When you first walked into that classroom, when we were just kids…" she laughed. "You were so sad and angry, I half-fell in love with you on the spot. Even if you _were _so mean to Sakura."

"You… liked me? Even back then?"

She knew the reason behind the catch in his voice and smiled at him with tired eyes. "Is it any surprise to you that I didn't say anything, Xiao Lang?" Her lips trembled slightly. "I'm not exactly someone who wears her heart on her sleeve. Well, not until recently, anyway."

"And even now, you're almost impossible to read," he murmured, tracing his fingers along her perfect cheek. "Tomoyo…"

"But you and I… are just not meant for each other." She smiled wistfully at him as the dreamy longing fell away from his face as though she'd snipped away the strings holding it in place.

"What do you mean, you and I…?"

"It just won't happen, Xiao Lang."

"It's happening right now."

"And that's why I'm putting an end to this, before it gets worse." If she had been with Eriol, she would have put on a quicksilver smile and flounced gracefully out of the room. But her eyes were dead and solemn. "You see, Xiao Lang, this is all a mistake. You have Sakura. And she's my best friend, and I love her. And I love you—very much," _I love you beyond anything_. "But that won't change anything else."

"I can't believe I'm hearing this from you," he said. "I thought you were finally ready to reach out for your own happiness."

_I am. But not at the expense of yours._ Her expression tightened slightly. He needed Sakura and Eriol more than he would ever need her, that was certain. Sakura was a good girlfriend, and Eriol had been a pretty nice boyfriend, while she had had him. She had no reason to hurt them this desperately—even though Eriol _had _read her mind. It might have been a twisted way to view things, but while she was ready to kill him for that, she didn't want to betray him like this.

And hadn't they been told that Sakura and Syaoran's destinies were intertwined? She couldn't even think about the irreparable damage she would cause if she played the other woman and took him away from Sakura.

She could already picture it. So the two of them would be together… and then what? They would go to school, where the two of them would be hated for loving each other when they were already involved with other people. Sakura was popular; if she got hurt, so many people would take it out on Syaoran. She could already see their isolation in her mind. Sonomi would blame everything on Syaoran and do everything possible to make the two of them miserable. Most likely, she would be locked up and home-schooled for the rest of her high school life… and then where would Syaoran be? He would have a girlfriend he wouldn't be able to see anyway.

But when he looked at her, all she could see was an ocean that was not blue, and she wanted to drown in it. She groaned quietly to himself. He wasn't making it any easier…

She took a breath to steady herself, then stood up. "I am so sorry, Xiao Lang."

"Why are you doing this?" he whispered. "Is it that maybe… you don't feel that way after all?"

"No!" she exploded. How could she even begin to explain? "I just…" She hesitated. If she told him the truth, he wouldn't let her go. But he could read her so easily. _I don't want to ruin your life._

"Stay."

And with that word, she could feel her heart breaking. Because the very same reason that made her want to do exactly what he was asking her to do was the one compelling her to leave. "I can't."

"Can't… or won't?"

"Both." She had already made up her mind. "Just… just take care of yourself, Xiao Lang."

Syaoran stared at her in wretched bewilderment as she wrapped her arms around him, not knowing that it would be the last time that he would see her for a long, long time. She pressed her lips against his with an urgency that nearly knocked him back—there was an edge of desperation to her kiss that sent his emotions spiraling in confusion.

Reluctantly she broke away. If she was going to be damned, she sure as hell wasn't taking him with her—but she would take the memories. She would never forget. "Please, be happy," she murmured as she closed the door behind her.

* * *

But he hadn't obeyed her. How could he? As though he could be happy after she had left. He hadn't realized just how emotionally connected they had become in the all-too short time that they'd shared together. When she'd left, he felt as though his world had been ripped apart, exposing it all as a flimsy charade of life, devoid of any real happiness or growth.

Sakura, Eriol and the others found him like that, sitting with his head in his hands, looking as though he'd just had his heart cut out. And in a sense, it had been.

"Syaoran?" Sakura ventured timidly. They had all rushed over, certain that Tomoyo was there and concerned about her, but it seemed like Syaoran was going through his own sort of crisis. "Are you…?"

"I'm…" But he wasn't fine, damn it. He snapped his mouth shut abruptly. "Forget it," he hissed. She flinched. He hadn't spoken so harshly to her since the days when they were still rivals for the Clow Cards.

"Syaoran," Eriol said softly. "Tomoyo. Where is she?"

_Gone._ He shook his head wordlessly.

Eriol's eyes ticked over to the messy bed he was sitting on, and the fact that he wasn't wearing a shirt. He paled. Syaoran was a stand-up sort of guy… he would never… Syaoran caught his train of thought and looked grimly up at him.

"I can't sense her aura, Syaoran," Eriol murmured, straining to find some leftover traces of Tomoyo in the room. "And neither can Sakura. Now that I think about it, she's been able to creep up on me without me noticing recently and slip away without me realizing… as though I don't sense her at all. Why do you think that would be?"

Syaoran looked away. "You won't be able to sense her again, Eriol," he said wearily. Somehow he knew that Tomoyo would never take that charm off. "I don't know where she is anymore."

"She was here, though," Sakura said. It was a statement, not a question.

"Yes. She was here. And now she's gone."

Yue eyed him thoughtfully. There was no use prying even more into the boy's head right now—he could see that Syaoran was still reeling from some kind of shock, and he was guessing it had something to do with Tomoyo. "It's obvious that Tomoyo already left. We might be able to catch up with her if we go now."

Sakura bit her lip. "Okay," she said slowly. "Syaoran, are you coming? Tomoyo..."

The amber-eyed boy sprang to life. "Yeah, I'm coming."

"Let's spread out," Touya suggested. "I'll take Sakura, Yue can go with Syaoran, and Eriol with Kero."

"I'll ask Ruby Moon and Spinel Sun to check too," Eriol muttered hurriedly, with a quick nod as he got out the door, Kero following obediently behind him.

Sakura's eyes turned on her boyfriend. "Syaoran…"

When he looked into her face, he suddenly felt guilt stab at him. "I'm sorry, Sakura," he murmured. He glanced at Touya, who had an unfathomable expression on his face. Usually Touya looked at him like he thought that Syaoran would hurt Sakura.

Now he looked at him as though Syaoran already had.

And he wasn't wrong...

"What's going on?" she asked, anxiety making her voice crack as she voiced the question.

"Later," Yue said flatly, before Syaoran could open his mouth. "It's important that we find Tomoyo. If we were sure that she had safe haven, we could take the time to sort everything out, but—"

Sakura nodded. "Let's go, onii-chan," she said, tugging at Touya's arm. Syaoran took a moment to slip his shirt over his head, and then nodded at Yue. "Want to go out the window? It'll be faster."

As he flew out, with Syaoran leaping from behind him (never mind the fact that it was on the sixth floor), Yue glanced at the distressed boy. "What happened between you and Tomoyo?"

Syaoran sucked in a quick, surprised breath. "How did you know?"

"It's written all over your face." Yue didn't smile. "Li Syaoran, even as Tsukihiro Yukito, I have watched Daidouji Tomoyo for a long, long time. I knew that face she put on. I also knew that it would change when she saw you. When you first came to Tomoeda…" He looked down at the young man hopping from tree to tree, roof to roof. "No one else could tell, but I could."

"You're too observant," Syaoran said quietly. "Yukito knows too, of course. That White Day…"

"I serve my mistress," Yue replied. "I am devoted to her, and I don't want to see her hurt. _But,_" he added significantly, "Daidouji Tomoyo is also a subject of concern for me."

"Did she come crying to you before?"

Yue shook his head. "Hardly—she didn't cry at all. She smiled a lot, but it never quite reached up to her eyes. And sometimes, when she thought that people weren't looking, that smile would drop and she would look exhausted, as though it was costing her too much effort to hold it in place. Eternally video-taping, cheerful Tomoyo, who never asked for anything and absorbed whatever abuse the world hurled at her."

Syaoran bit his lip. It was about time someone had realized. "Why didn't you do anything?"

Yue stared at him for a moment, paused mid-flight. "There was no point in ripping away that mask until she was ready to cast it off," he said. "She wasn't ready to let go of it. I had to wait until she was pushed to breaking point, until everything became too much for her and she had to crack."

"That," Syaoran said through gritted teeth, "is an extremely warped point of view."

"You only speak that way because you were the one to tear away her façade," Yue said simply. "She loved her best friend. And she loved you. Then you fell for my mistress, and effectively removed her last two pretensions at happiness—her hidden love and her closest friend. If you had tried to help her before that, she would have pretended that nothing was happening. You can't _force _someone to heal."

"But I want her to," Syaoran said.

"And in the process, you will hurt my mistress," Yue said. "What you feel for her is more than just wanting her to heal, and therefore those emotions are clouding how you view the subject." He looked dispassionately down at the boy. "You love her."

Syaoran swallowed hard. "Yes."

* * *

They hadn't found her in time. By then, Tomoyo had hopped on the quickest plane to Hong Kong. Her head pounded. It was a very, very stupid thing to do. But then, hadn't she been doing a lot of stupid things lately? She closed her eyes with a sigh as she sank into the third-class seat. It was the first time she hadn't flown first-class…

She tipped her head back, trying to hold back the tears. She was going to leave behind everything, everyone.

But what had it meant anyway, to be with them? Pretense. Or else unhappiness, not only for her but for the person she loved the most.

"Miss… are you okay?"

Her eyes snapped open and she glanced at the stewardess peering down at her. "Quite all right, thank you," she said politely, knowing that she looked like a wreck. She had run straight to the airport, not having a chance to change out of her by now wrinkled robes. Nor did she have time to fix her disheveled appearance. For a moment, she found herself under the mad impulse to laugh—perfectly put-together Tomoyo, looking anything less than neat and beautiful?

The stewardess didn't look quite convinced, but had learned from experience not to bother passengers who didn't want her help.

Tomoyo sighed, touching her lips. She could still feel their kiss.

Years later, as Xiao Long sat at her computer, she could still feel it. And again, she had to keep from crying.

_But what have I accomplished by coming here?_

Meiling had tricked her. Crafty Meiling, who had insisted that she come to New York for her music career. At first she had resisted, protesting that if she went international there was a good chance that she might be discovered. Then Meiling had pulled the guilt card and pointed out that she hardly ever asked her for anything, and she only had Xiao Long's best interest at heart. She remembered the look on her face mirrored in Meiling's eyes that day, and the wince on Meiling's face when the crimson-eyed girl had spoken. She owed Meiling too much to ever say no to her.

All the times she had tried to kill herself after coming to Hong Kong loomed in her mind. For the most part, she had gotten over her suicidal tendencies (which had been much worse the first time she had come to Hong Kong). But sometimes, it would be too much. It might be in the middle of class, while she was out buying food, wherever, whenever; there was no way to predict it… but she would suddenly feel the guilt and pain wash over her in relentless waves, and she would try to end it. The last time—just a year ago—she had landed in the hospital for a month. She had driven Meiling crazy, and that had only made her cry more.

She could still remember Meiling screaming. _You idiot, you don't have to do this_! _He loves you. _

Did he? She shivered, wishing that she had just hopped on a plane and flown back to Beijing. Meiling begged her to stay, pointing out that Syaoran didn't even realize who she was, and that nothing she did now could touch Eriol or Sakura. For that she was grateful; she had hurt them all enough the day she left. Though staying that day would have destroyed them even more.

It had been difficult to slip by, to hide from all the efforts of her friends and mother to search for her—after combing through all of Japan and posting 'Have you seen this girl?' signs, she had ended up on international news. Well, she _was _the Daidouji Corp. heiress, after all, and after her mother's recent efforts to expand the business, they were more well-known than ever. But the Li name had smoothed things over for her.

Of course, she could still remember the disbelief on Li Yelan's face when she had simply showed up at their home.

The second her plane landed, she withdrew some money from one of her many international bank accounts, hailed a taxi, and rattled off the Li's address, mentally thanking Syaoran for teaching her how to speak Chinese. Exhausted, she whispered her name to the guards who challenged her presence there, and seconds later, Meiling and Li Yelan had run out to meet her.

"Tomoyo, oh my god, what happened?" Meiling took in her appearance with shock. She hugged her friend. The last time they had spoken, Tomoyo had told her excitedly about going to a festival with Syaoran, Eriol and Sakura. She had seemed so happy.

Tomoyo opened her mouth to say that she was all right, but Li Yelan said quietly, "You can tell us what happened. I see you are in great pain... and no doubt right now my son is too."

And then she broke down.

* * *

They all met up after about three hours of searching. "We went everywhere we could think she would go," Touya said breathlessly. "The Miharas, Sasakis, Yanagisawas… all of her friends. We even checked Terada-sensei's house."

Syaoran shook his head. He had known that she wouldn't have turned to any of them for help. "We looked through the streets, mostly, and checked out some of the hotels in the area… but we couldn't find her either." He swallowed hard and clenched his fists. He glanced at Eriol. "And you?"

Eriol shook his head. "Daidouji-sama's searching too…"

"So are Rika, Chiharu, Naoko, Yamazaki-kun…" Sakura trailed off. "Everyone we know is looking for her now."

"They won't find her," Syaoran said tonelessly. A small part of him regretted giving Tomoyo the Li clan charm now. If he hadn't, she wouldn't have been able to escape them so easily.

Eriol studied him. "And what, my cute little descendant, would be your part in all this?" he asked, his voice dangerously soft. "What were you doing with her?"

Now _that_ Syaoran would not stomach. "If you're implying that Tomoyo and I have been deliberately going behind your backs all this time, you're dead wrong," he said coldly. "If you don't have any faith in me, at least have some in Tomoyo."

_All this time. _Not all this time. Which meant... Sakura's eyes widened. That they were indeed going behind their backs. Perhaps not the whole time, but they had.

Eriol knew it too, a split second before Sakura even made the connection. "But she didn't love me, did she?" If he only knew the answer to that, perhaps he could stomach this.

Yue looked sorrowfully down at Eriol, the only remnant of Clow's image that he had. Eriol had really loved Tomoyo. He could feel it.

"No. I'm sorry," Syaoran said, feeling guilty when he saw the dark-haired boy's face crumple.

"Then _what_ the hell was she playing at?"

"She was just… trying to make up for something that she'd never had," Syaoran said distantly. "And she wanted things to be great for all of us. See, it would have been so nice and tidy if you fell for her, she fell for you, and Sakura and I lived happily ever after. The end. But life just doesn't..." He felt like screaming, like hitting something. He wanted to find Tomoyo and grab her--to shake her or to kiss her, he wasn't quite sure just yet.

Touya looked hard at Syaoran. He had always known, somehow, that the _gaki _would break his sister's heart. And he had turned out to be right. But… the way Syaoran looked right now… he found himself unable to blame him. His heart hurt for Tomoyo, who had been like another sister to him—a more mature one than Sakura, certainly, but one who still needed his protection.

Sakura's emerald eyes flickered slightly. "I've been a fool, haven't I?" she muttered. How much had she not seen—or chosen to ignore? The expression on Syaoran's face was a painful emotion beyond anything she could have ever imagined. It was more than the intense relief that had flooded his features that time at the elevator, when she had returned to him safe and sound. It was more than the first time he had told her he loved her. He had never once shown his feelings with this much passion.

"No," Syaoran replied. "_I _am the fool. Not you."

"Haven't we all been fools?" Eriol asked, shaking his head.

* * *

It took Eriol almost three years to track Tomoyo down. But then, none of them really stopped searching—not even Sakura, who had the most reason to despise Tomoyo. Sakura had simply said, "She was my best friend, and now I have to find her and sort all this out." He had shivered… _was _her best friend; past tense…

But then, why was he surprised? Syaoran had meant everything to Sakura. The bonds of destiny had bound them.

It was easy to fight fate, though. The problem was paying the price for it.

It had been difficult to track her, and a mere coincidence that he finally did. He'd gone along with Syaoran and Sakura to Hong Kong the summer of that year—they were trying to be friends again, but the awkwardness was still there, and more than a little anger (he had punched Syaoran right in the face just for the hell of it the week following the incident, and Syaoran hadn't even stopped him)—and he had left Syaoran to mope in his room and Sakura to Syaoran's older sisters. Poor Sakura. The girls had fussed over her as usual, but there was something wrong about the tone of their high-pitched giggles as they dressed her up like a doll.

Meiling was reported to be staying in an apartment near her college with one of her friends from university. By then, Sakura had gone on to Tokyo U., and Syaoran had decided to study abroad in Europe. He, on the other hand, didn't need it at all, and had decided to stay as he was in Tomoeda.

He had decided to stop by the university and greet Meiling. _Anything _to get away from Li Yelan's pitying eyes. "Excuse me, do you know where Li Meiling is?" he asked a passer-by in flawless Chinese.

"Oh, _her_. Li's in that private practice room with Lin again," the girl had said, shaking her head. "Don't bother, they don't let anyone in there except the teachers. It's good to be a Li—all those privileges."

"Lin?" he repeated, frowning.

"Lin Xiao Long," the girl clarified. "Li doesn't hang around any other Lin."

"Or do you mean Xiao Lang…?" But Syaoran was still hiding in his room at home, burying himself in work and studies.

"No, Xiao Long, the overseas student with the long, weird hair. The one who looks like that girl on the news before. I thought everyone knew her by now… do you even go to this school?" she suddenly demanded suspiciously.

"Ah, no. I'm an old family friend of the Li's," he explained smoothly. "We're rather distantly connected."

"Oh," the girl said, unsure whether to believe him. But he spoke with such confidence and charm that it was almost impossible not to. "Well… er…"

He shrugged. "I'll find Meiling on my own, then," he said, his eyes going slightly unfocused. Then with a little smile he thanked her and walked away. Thankfully, he still knew how to sense Meiling's presence…

But he stopped in shock at the familiar voices conversing.

"—a great opportunity, I don't see why you shouldn't take it." Meiling's words came out strong and exasperated. "It isn't often that record companies seek out music students. Usually they end up having to scrabble for work, even if they graduate from a prestigious university like this.."

"But Meiling, if… if someone recognized me…" The beautiful, musical tone threw him completely off. It was her. There was no doubt about it.

"For God's sake, it's not like Syaoran even browses through the CD stores. And you aren't going international, it'll just be here, so what's the big deal? It isn't like Sa—the others will know about it," she amended hastily. She couldn't bring up Sakura's name. She just couldn't.

"I'm scared, Meiling."

"Aren't you always," Meiling sighed.

Then the other girl became very quiet. "There's someone standing at the door, Meiling," she finally said.

Meiling threw the door open. "Hiragizawa-san," she gasped.

Tomoyo sat there, her hand clutching at the Li clan charm around her neck. "Eriol." Her amethyst eyes were as unreadable as ever, although they seemed to burn feverishly. She looked much, much thinner now, although still as pale and perfectly composed as ever. There was no trace of the fright and indecision that he had heard so clearly earlier as she had spoken to Meiling.

But it was there. He knew it was there. And she looked ill and tired. And broken.

"Tomoyo," he murmured.

Her face, already colorless, turned even whiter. Was he angry at her? He seemed calm, but then, he was almost as opaque as she was, when he wanted to be.

"I am sorry, Eriol," she said quietly.

For a moment he found himself unable to speak and unsure of what to feel. Relief? Anger? Sadness? "We need to talk." His eyes flickered at Meiling, who glanced questioningly at Tomoyo.

Tomoyo tried to shake her head. "I don't think—"

"_Please_. You owe me that, at least."

Her expression shifted slightly. "Meiling, can you leave us for a while?" Wordlessly, her Chinese friend got up and departed, but not before shooting a warning look at Eriol. He wanted to laugh. As though she could actually do anything if he chose to hurt Tomoyo.

_As though he could even hurt Tomoyo._

The realization hit him with almost-tangible pain. He would not, could not touch a single hair on that lovely head. "Thank you," he said instead.

She watched him with wary eyes. "I suppose you're angry at me."

"Very."

"What could I do, Eriol?" she asked. "If you only knew… but you can't understand…"

"You could have tried me, Tomoyo," he replied. "You never let me have the chance to know, or to understand."

She looked down at her hands. "I know that I didn't." She swallowed hard. "I wasn't used to revealing any part of myself to anyone. What happened that day when you… first… kissed me…" She winced. "I was in pain. And you got caught up in emotions that weren't related to you at all."

He looked at her with grief etched on his face. "I completely misunderstood. I thought you meant that you loved me back."

"I wish we could have been friends, though," she murmured.

He hesitated. She was so worn, yet still so lovely. "We could still be," he muttered. He glanced at the charm around her neck and felt himself go rigid. "The Li clan charm."

"Meiling told me the truth after a while," she said softly. "At first I didn't know what it was. Xiao Lang gave it to me on my sixteenth birthday, and I've never taken it off since. When I found out what it was, I went to Yelan-sama and offered to give it back… I felt that perhaps I didn't deserve it anymore. But she told me that she couldn't take it, because Xiao Lang had chosen me."

Eriol swallowed hard. He wished that Tomoyo wasn't telling him all this, it hurt too much and—then he realized it. That was why she couldn't love him. Because he didn't want to hear the things that burdened him.

He sighed. Suddenly, he felt exhausted, and so very, very young. "All I want is to have you back, Tomoyo."

"But Tomoyo doesn't exist anymore. I'm not Tomoyo now. It's Lin. Lin Xiao Long."

"Tomoyo still exists. I see her, right in front of me. She's tired, and unhappy, and very much scared. She's still hiding behind all her masks. But I want to help. And I guess, somewhere in my heart…" _I love you. _"I can't stop caring."

She watched him with frightened eyes. "I don't love you, Eriol," she told him firmly. "Not in the way that you want me to."

"I know," he said, shrugging, even as the stab of pain and hurt went through him. "Pity you only told me now… it would have made things a lot less complicated. But I know, and it's enough. So?" He held out his hand to her. "Please, let me understand."

Slowly she leveled her eyes with him, and opened her mind. She only showed him certain parts—he could feel the barrier still hiding some—but he graciously made no comment. And he knew that she was trying to diminish the hurt of most of the memories he saw, but he was still upset by what he was allowed to observe. He winced at the torture she had put herself through over the years, when they were still children, and was even more alarmed when he watched how she had been since coming to Hong Kong. She was scared of her own shadow, more isolated than ever, and as he had told her before, so lonely. She had a wonderful opportunity in front of her—a record company had heard her at the last student concert and had offered her a deal—but she was too terrified at what might happen.

When they had finished, Tomoyo looked at him with eyes brimming with tears. Wordlessly, he squeezed her hand. "And you're still not ready to chase after your own dreams?" He felt a sickening pang in his stomach when he realized that Syaoran was just there, in his room at home, and it would take them no more than a few minutes to go there and for Tomoyo to run straight to him…

And he had no doubt that Syaoran would welcome her with open arms in spite of everything. In Syaoran's place, he would have done the same. He would simply catch her by the mouth, no questions asked, and let life sort itself out later.

"I didn't want to hurt him," she whispered. "I just wanted to keep him safe." _The road to hell is paved with good intentions._

He took her hand again, and simply showed her what had happened.

Sakura, looking endlessly for Tomoyo—as though if she brought her friend back, everything would be okay again, although the glimmer in her emerald eyes had died since the messy break-up. He felt Tomoyo's horror at the bleakness in Sakura--betrayed by her best friend and boyfriend... the cliche was almost laughable--and shifted viewpoints.

He himself spending days on end just sitting in one position, staring blankly into space, and (to his regret) driving Ruby Moon and Spinel sun crazy with worry. Touya and Yukito, who both eventually ended up working for Daidouji Corp., suffered for everyone else, but bore it without complaint. And Sonomi… this was the part that he softened most for her, but he could still see the guilt that she felt as she saw the rapidly aging woman still angry, still hopeful of finding her.

And he saved the worst for last. Her eyes flickered to him, and he looked away. He didn't want her to see… but she tugged gently on his hand, and he knew that he had to.

Her soft gasp expressed the emotion that she couldn't articulate, as she took in Xiao Lang of the last few years. He completed his high school education at Tomoeda—with flying colors, naturally, and at the top of his class (a position that had once been _hers_; after she'd left, he'd quickly taken it)—but he had changed… so much. As she had. When she looked into the taut face that grimly searched for her throughout Japan, she was reminded of a certain amber-eyed little boy who had fought with Sakura the first time he had arrived in Tomoeda. But this Syaoran was different. Even worse, in fact, because this one had learned what it was to be alive… and then have it taken away.

She had destroyed everyone she had left behind. Struggling for breath, she abruptly let go of his hand.

"Come back."

Fear flitted in her face. What would happen if she did? If she stayed away, there was still a chance of hope for Syaoran. He didn't deserve someone so broken, so stupid. Even if her absence hurt him. He would get over it. He had a bright future ahead of him. Perhaps he would even reunite with Sakura; after all, from what Meiling told her, he had brought her back with him to Hong Kong. He would forget... she choked."I can't."

"Can't… or wont?"

She tried to smile. "Both," she murmured, repeating the same answer to a question that had been asked of her before.

"I see," he said slowly. In the last couple of years, he had grown much closer to his guardians, both his new ones and his old ones. Particularly Yue. And perhaps he had learned something. _I can't force her to heal. _

She watched him with a wild kind of terror in her eyes. "Eriol?" she probed tentatively.

"It's all right," he assured her. "But… if you will stay here… please, start carving out some sort of life for yourself. When will you stop living in these shadows?"

Meiling knocked on the door. "Are you guys okay in there?" she asked. Of course she knew that Tomoyo—Xiao Long—couldn't be hurt physically or magically, now that she had the Li clan charm. But emotionally… that was a different thing all together.

Eriol opened the door. "So sorry to keep you shut out for so long, Meiling-san," he said. Meiling could see the tell-tale traces of tears on Tomoyo's face, but one glance at her friend and she knew that it hadn't been what she had feared. So she wouldn't have to beat up Eriol after all.

Eriol shook his head. _Damn you, Li Syaoran. _He went back to the Li household, got his things, and left. Since that day he didn't say another word to Syaoran, and Syaoran never questioned it.

* * *

His heart thudded as he paused outside Xiao Long—Tomoyo's—door. Four years. She had left him sitting there, to search aimlessly for her for all this time, never once contacting him to even let him know that she was okay, that she hadn't been kidnapped or worse… he shuddered, recollecting all the fearful theories that had formed in his head.

Could he deal with seeing her again?

He hesitated outside her door, his hand already stretched out to knock on it. _I can't do this, _he realized, tasting panic like metal in his mouth. _If she wanted to, she could simply have told me who she was… _He slapped himself upside the head. _Idiot, why didn't _you _realize it was her? _Because she had not treated him as 'Syaoran'. She had acted as though he was simply another person, and he realized how odd he found that. Even as kids, Tomoyo had treated him as someone special. Lin Xiao Long, however, had stayed her distance... mostly, that was.

Then he heard a sad, musical voice from within, saying the word "Eriol". Before he had the chance to think, he found himself opening the door, which was mercifully unlocked.

"Xi—Li-kun," Xiao Long burst out, surprised. She had her sunglasses off for once, and she reached for them. But the damage was done. He could see the familiar, jewel-like purple clearly. Worse, her raven hair tumbled down in the curls whose fragrance he remembered all too clearly.

From behind her, he could see Eriol's face on the webcam—a little thinner now, but still rather the same as it had been when they had been younger. Eriol seemed to mutter something under his breath (something which Syaoran suspected was probably profane).

"I'm sorry for not knocking," he said quickly.

She paled, trying to search in his face for answers, but where once they had understood each other's every thought, she now found him impossible to read. "I…" She shrugged. "It's all right."

Eriol watched the exchange with tight eyes. He had told her he loved her, many, many times since he had first found her in Hong Kong and they had agreed to maintain a relatively close relationship via the Internet and the occasional visit, but she had always told him that she couldn't—and wouldn't—love him. Not in the way that he wanted her to, not in the way she had tried to force herself.

That she already belonged to someone… someone she had lost. No, not lost; someone she had given up voluntarily, in the hopes that she could safeguard his happiness by doing so.

And now _he_ was there, in front of the girl who had maddeningly haunted his dreams for the past four years. He swallowed hard. How could she ever have imagined that she could make Syaoran happy by going away? How could _anyone _who'd ever known her be happy with her disappearance?

"Best of luck to you both," he muttered, before turning off his webcam, aware of the wild grief he felt ripping through his chest.

"Master?" Ruby Moon inquired, concerned. "Are you sure that that was the wisest course of action?"

"She's happier this way," he said dully, half-praying that things would turn out okay, but the other half of him knowing that if they didn't… he would offer safe haven for Tomoyo.

But they would turn out okay. For them, at least. He knew that too.

"Li-kun, is something wrong?" she asked quietly.

"Please don't call me that, Xiao Long," he said, a rough edge to his words. "Little Dragon, huh?"

Her eyes flashed with understanding. He knew. "Xiao… Lang…" Her hands twisted in her lap and she lowered her gaze, trying not to show how much she wanted to just stand up and embrace him.

"I would have chased after you, if only I had known where to look," he said harshly.

"I thought that it would be better if you couldn't find me," she countered, her tone bleak. "I came because Meiling wanted me to. And because she told me that you weren't okay…" She trailed off. _I couldn't bear that. _"I was sure that she was tricking me into coming. After all, the press is filled with news of you and your success. And, may I add, the newshounds are thrilled to report that you're one of the most eligible bachelors on the planet…"

She winced. She had let herself show that she minded. She remembered how much it had hurt, reading one of those trashy tabloids and hearing that he was linked to this girl or that girl, had spent a weekend at the home of another, and was even engaged to yet another. She had tried to laugh it off, but she knew that Li Yelan and Meiling had seen right through her.

So why hadn't she been happy, if she had thought that he was flourishing perfectly well without her? That was what she wanted, wasn't it?

Because she couldn't have him. Because, looking at every picture, watching every bit of footage caught on camera… he never smiled. Not once. His amber eyes had dulled, and the only flash of life that came into them was when he was angry… or sad.

"But with your looks and charm, I suppose it's no surprise that women throw themselves at you," she added weakly.

He had watched her in silence through her little spiel, but now he spoke. "Women I didn't care for," he said softly. "Women, who, I'm vain enough to admit, chased after me--whether for the money or prestige, I have no idea. But they failed… the same way I failed to chase you…you were always… not there. I couldn't even _see _those other women, Tomoyo." He remembered once when he and Sakura had tried to resurrect their failed relationship, going to a fancy restaurant. She had shown up more beautiful than he had ever seen her, her hair twisted elegantly into a knot at the back of her head, her makeup carefully applied. How her passion still shone clearly through her green eyes.

He could barely force himself to talk to her. The whole time he was with her he felt compelled to be elsewhere, with eyes purple instead of emerald. That night, over dessert, Sakura had simply burst into tears and walked off.

"I didn't come here to reopen old wounds, Xiao Lang," Xiao Long--Tomoyo--whispered. "I came here because Meiling made me. I stayed to release you of… of whatever it is that you may think we have. We were just children back then. We didn't know what we were doing." She looked away.

"You don't believe that any more than I do," he murmured.

Her vision was blurred by tears. "Please, it's not too late," she said. Her hands trembled as she reached to unclasp the Li clan charm around her neck. "You can have this back, you can give it to someone who deserves it more. You still have your whole life ahead of you, you can forget this nonsense and…"

"Tomoyo."

She flinched at the sound of her name on his lips. Beautiful pain. He reached out easily and pulled her hands away from the charm.

"Come back to me."

She let out a ragged sob. "I just wanted you to be happy." _You were supposed to pretend that nothing had happened, that I had merely run away and that you had nothing at all to do with it. Then you could still somehow have built a relationship with Sakura, still kept a friendship with Eriol, never have to break so many ties because of me…_

"I was, because you were there with me. And now I am, because you're here. But in between that…"

"Do you think that you would have been happy, if we had been put through all the trials I left to spare you from?"

He stared at her. "Is that why you left?" he said. She shook her head frantically, but he already knew. "Tomoyo… how could you think, even for a moment, that I would abandon you because of those things? At the very least, we could have left together, if we were forced to."

"Right. You would have been accused of kidnapping me, or some other such thing… it would have ruined your life." She tried to hide behind a curtain of her dark hair, as she had once hidden from Eriol, once upon a time so long ago. "You're only hiding behind this illusion that you love me, Xiao Lang. It's been so many years. You can't… possibly…" She swallowed hard. "If I had stayed, perhaps you would have grown sick of me anyway."

He reached for her hand. "Look at me, Tomoyo." Unwillingly she raised her head and fell prey to the power smoldering in his amber eyes. "I searched for you for four years, and now that we're finally here, together, you tell me that I would have grown sick of you? That's stupid." She let out a little laugh at his words, and he found himself smiling despite it all. "You are… the most beautiful… the most intelligent… uniquely you. I dreamt of you every night while you were gone. I wanted you back more than anything else in the world. I would have given up anything and everything to hear you laugh and even for you to kick my ass at the dojo." He caught her in his arms. "So never tell me that I would have tired of you."

"But how do you know?" she protested, trying to push away but surrendering to the warmth of his arms around her.

"I just do," he replied simply, echoing her that day when he had asked her how she knew that what she felt for the person she cared for the most—not knowing then, that she had meant _him_—was love. He saw by the way she lowered her eyes that she was remembering the incident too, and as he traced her cheek with his hand she could tell that he knew that she was thinking of that memory. Already they were returning to the days when they didn't have to say anything to understand what they meant.

_Heaven, forgive me…_ she let out a shaky giggle as the last of her defenses collapsed, and abruptly tears mixed with her laughter as she gave in to his embrace. "Xiao Lang…" She had missed him so very, very much.

"Why don't you hate me?" she asked him, her breath warm against his ear. He shivered slightly, holding her even tighter. "I thought that you… would be angry at me, at the very least."

He chuckled quietly. "Well, why didn't you hate me when I first started dating Sakura?"

She sighed. "That's different."

"Why?"

"Because… it just is," she spluttered. "How could I hate you? I was too much… in love."

"And the same goes for me," he said, kissing the top of her head.

"It's about time," Meiling mumbled from outside the door.

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A/N: And here ends Chapter 10. Phew. It was so long. TT But I thought I owed you guys an extra-long chapter for the extra-long wait, right?

I'm thinking of writing an epilogue. Somehow it doesn't feel resolved enough, but that's just my opinion. What do you guys think? Suggestions for an ending scene are welcome, though I can't yet promise that I'll use them. I have something forming in my head, but as to what it is, I'll keep it under my hat for a while. :)

God, I loved writing this fic. Even with all the epic mistakes and corniness and real-life drama I randomly shoved in here, I had such a great time doing this. Liked it? Please review! Didn't like it? Drop a line and please tell me how to improve. I appreciate constructive criticism (take note of constructive, please, I don't want someone saying 'I don't like this because CCS is a piece of shoujo #!").

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